1 A TM /TIYT^VTHH Ij 14 I \\\ ^ >\l { - <} Din 1 1 \jui 1 1 o ^ W ! T -H NUMEROUS AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT b 1 . VOLUME- L TH-E UWIYERSITY OF GLASGOW. INNER COURT 6-LJ3S&OW, EDI/7BURG-H >?I7D A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF EMINENT SCOTSMEN. IN FOUR VOLUMES* ORIGINALLY EDITED BY EGBERT CHAMBEES. NEW EDITION, REVISED UNDER THE CARE OF THE PUBLISHERS. WITH A SUPPLEMENTAL VOLUME, CONTINUING THE BIOGRAPHIES TO THE PRESENT TIME. BY THE EEV. THOS. THOMSON, AUTHOR or "THE HISTOBY OF SCOTLAND FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS," ETC., ETC. WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS. VOL. I. ABERCROMBY CREECH. BLACKIE AND SON: GLASGOW, EDINBURGH, AND LONDON. MD C CCLV. ^ GLASGOW : W. O. BLACKIK AND CO., PR1NTKE3, VltLA FIELD. PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. THE SCOTTISH BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY was originally printed in four volumes, and completed in the year 1834, as will be seen from the Editor's Preface, which is subjoined. A New Edition, including memorials of the many eminent individuals deceased since that date, having been called for, the Publishers, besides reprinting from stereotype the four volumes of which the Work was primarily composed, have added a fifth volume, including the later lives adverted to, under the editorship of the Eev. Thomas Thomson, author of the " History of Scotland for the use of Schools," &c. The stereotypes of the original Work have been revised under the inspection of the Publishers. The alterations required to be made consisted chiefly in bringing references to passing events, and individuals living when the Work was written, into chrono- logical harmony with the more advanced period of time in which it now appears; the emendation of several verbal inaccuracies; the correction of some erroneous statements ; and the interfusion of the original Supplement. In executing this latter part of the revision, it has been found needful, in a few cases to retrench, in others to amplify, individual lives ; two or three biographies have likewise been wholly re-written ; one additional memoir added that of St. Aidan ; and seven, of persons who appeared to have insufficient claims, have been suppressed. In Mr. Thomson's PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME, besides the lives of individuals recently deceased, a few belonging to more ancient times have been in- serted, which were casually omitted in the original Work. In order to enhance the value oi this edition, the series of Illustrations has been greatly extended ; and the Work, in fact, now presents a very complete Scottish Portrait Gallery. It need scarcely be added, that by this combination of pictorial repre- sentation with biographic delineation, the reader is made familiar at once with the actions, the character, and the countenances of many of those distinguished persons whose genius or exploits have increased the fame of our native land. GLASGOW, August, 1855. PKEFACE ORIGINAL EDITION BY MR. ROBERT CHAMBERS. A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY of eminent natives of Scotland lias been regarded as a desideratum in our national literature, for the greater part of a century. Such a work was successively contemplated by Sir David Dalrymple and Mr William Smellie, each of whom proceeded so far with the design as to write a few of the articles. When the editor of the present work began a few years ago to inquire into the literary and historical antiquities of his country, he found the desire of possessing a dictionary of this kind not in the least abated, but very little hope enter- tained that, under the existing prospects of literature, it would be pos- sible to present such a book to the public. He proceeded, nevertheless, perhaps rather under the influence of a peculiar enthusiasm, than any wiser or more considerate motive, to take upon himself a task which at least two of his predecessors had failed to accomplish, and for which he could not but feel himself to be in many respects imperfectly qualified. Sometime after beginning his labours, a fortunate alliance with his pre- sent publishers, who had projected a similar work, removed many of the original difficulties, and he was enabled to commence the publica- tion in 1832. In now taking a retrospective view of his labours, he sees, with some regret, passages which he could amend, and even one or two articles which, upon a more rigid estimate of merit, he would be disposed to omit. He has much satisfaction, however, in reflecting that very few instances of error in point of fact have been indicated to him ; so that he is enabled to hope that his work, upon the whole, makes that near approach to correctness, which is the most valuable feature in a book of reference. With regard to one very important point in the composition of the work, he trusts he may be permitted to hazard an observation. Of the many hundreds of persons whom he has commemorated, there are men of all denominations, religious and political, and even some who were the direct antagonists of each other, either in controversy or in civil war. He is aware that the most of writers, under his circumstances, would have felt it to be a duty, wherever there was occasion to allude VI PREFACE. to points of controversy, to express their own views, and adjust the estimate of every character by a reference to certain standards erected in their own minds. Such the present editor did not feel to be his duty. Considering that there can hardly be a Scottish Biographical Dictionary on each side of the great questions, and, furthermore, disposed to such a course by a sincere though humble desire to take a mild view of the opinions and proceedings of all honourable men, he studied, on the contrary, to confine himself to a simple representation of the pre- possessions of the various individuals under his notice, even to the extent, occasionally, of what may appear a tenderness, or perhaps some- thing more, for the opinions of various opposite thinkers, and the deeds of various contending partizans. Such a method of mem oil*- writing may expose him to some degree of censure, in an age characterized so much as the present by party heats ; but he trusts that it is the coiirse which will be most approved of by those who may chance to consult his pages in future times, when it is to be hoped that the most of the now existing controversies will only be matter of historical curiosity. While he experiences a natural, and, he hopes, allowable satisfaction in thus bringing to a close the greatest literary undertaking of his life, he cannot suppress a simultaneous feeling of regret at observing, throughout his volumes, the names of so many men who, at the time he commenced his undertaking, seemed little likely to go so soon through that solemn change which was to fit them for commemoration in his pages. Some of these he had the pleasure of considering as his friends ; and the pain with which he found himself called upon to narrate their biography, was proportionally great. Even in such a matter as this, humanity may read a touching lesson of the frailty and uncertainty of all that here belongs to it. He cannot conclude without gratefully acknowledging the kindness of many eminent and respectable individuals, in supplying him with the information which he required, and also the zeal and talent displayed by various gentlemen in assisting him in the details of the work. Anne Street, Edinburgh, November 7, 1334. EMINENT SCOTSMEN. A. ABERCROMBY, THE HONOURABLE ALEXANDER (Lord Abercromby), a distin- guished lawyer of the latter part of the 18th century, and an elegant occasional writer, was the youngest son of George Abercromby of Tullibody, in Clack- mannanshire, and brother of the celebrated Sir Ralph Abercromby. He was born on the 15th of October, 1745. While his elder brothers were destined for the army, Alexander chose the profession of the law, which was more consistent with his gentle and studious character. After going through the ordinary course of classes at the university of Edinburgh, he became, in 1766, a member of the Faculty of Advocates. He was at this early period of his life the fa- vourite of all who knew him, not only for the uncommon handsomeness of his person, but for the extreme sweetness of his disposition. Being given to the gaieties of fashionable life, he had little relish for laborious employment ; so that, for some years after his admission into the Faculty of Advocates, his splendid abilities were well-nigh obscured by indolence or frivolity. Roused at length to exertion, he engaged with ardour in all the duties of his profession, and soon became eminent for professional skill, and distinguished as a most eloquent pleader. His reputation and business rapidly increased, and soon raised him to the first rank at the Scottish bar. In May, 1702, he was appointed one of the judges of the Court of Session, when, in compliance with the custom of the Scottish judges, he adopted the title of Lord Abercromby ; and, in December following, he was called to a seat in the Court of Justiciary. "In his judicial capacity he was distinguished by a profound knowledge of law, a patient attention, a clearness of discernment, and an unbiassed impartiality which excited general admiration." His literary performances and character are thus summed up by his friend, Henry Mackenzie, who, after his death, undertook the task of recording his virtues and merits for the Royal Society : " The laborious employments of his profession did not so entirely engross him, as to preclude his indulging in the elegant amusements of polite literature. He was one of that , society of gentlemen who, in 1779, set on foot the periodical paper, published at Edinburgh during that and the subsequent year, under the title of the 2 JOHN ABERCROMBY. PATRICK ABERCROM BV. Mirror ; and who afterwards gave to the world another work of a similar kind, the Lounger, published in 1785 and 1786. To these papers he was a very valu- able contributor, being the author of ten papers in the Mirror, and nine in the Lounger.- His papers are distinguished by an ease and gentlemanlike turn of expression, by a delicate and polished irony, by a strain of manly, honourable, and virtuous sentiment." Mackenzie states that they are also characterized by an unaffected tenderness, which he had displayed even in his speeches as a barrister, and adduces the following specimen : " There is one circumstance," says Mr Abercromby, in debating whether long or short life be most desirable, " which with me is alone sufficient to decide the question. If there be anything that can compensate the unavoidable evils with which this life is attended, and the numberless calamities to which mankind are subject, it is the pleasure arising from the society of those we love and esteem. Friendship is the cordial of life. Without it, who would wish to exist an hour? But every one who arrives at extreme old age, must make his account with surviving the greater part, perhaps the whole, of his friends. He must see them fall from him by degrees, while he is left alone, single and unsupported, like a leafless trunk, exposed to every storm, and shrinking from every blast." Such was not destined to be the fate of Lord Abercromby, who, after exemplifying almost every virtue, and acting for some years in a public situation with the undivided applause of the world, was cut off by a pulmonary complaint, at Falmouth, whither he had gone for the sake of his health, on the 17th of November, 1795. ABERCROMBY, JOHN, the author of several esteemed works on gardening, was the son of a respectable gardener near Edinburgh, where he was born about the year 1726. Having been bred by his father to his own profession, he removed to London at the early age of eighteen, and became a work- man in the gardens attached to the royal palaces. Here he distinguished himself so much by his taste in laying out grounds, that he was encouraged to write upon the subject. His first work, however, in order to give it greater weight, was published under the name of a then more eminent horticulturist, Mr iVlawe, gardener to the Duke of Leeds, under the title of Mawe's Gardeners' Calendar. It soon rose into notice, and still maintains its place. The editor of a recent edition of this work says, " The general principles of gardening seem to be as correctly ascertained and clearly described by this author, as by any that have succeeded him." And further, " The style of Aber- cromby, though somewhat inelegant, and in some instances prolix, yet appears, upon the whole, to be fully as concise, and at least as correct and intelligible, as that of some of the more modern, and less original, of his successors." Aber- cromby afterwards published, under his own name, The Universal Dictionary of Gardening and Botany, in 4to. ; which was followed, in succession, by the Gardeners' Dictionary, the Gardeners' Daily Assistant, the Gardeners' Vade Mecum, the Kitchen Gardener and Hot-bed Forcer, the Hot-house Gardener, and numerous other works, most of which attained to popularity. Aber- cromby, after a useful and virtuous life, died at London in 1806, aged about eighty years. ABERCROMBY, PATRICK, historian, was the third son of Alexander Aber- eromby of Fetterneir, in Aberdeenshire, a branch of the house of Birkenbog in Banffshire, which again derived its descent from Abercromby of Abercromby ' Nos. 4, 9, 18, 45, 51, 57, 65, 68, 87, 90, 104. 2 Nos. 3, 10, 14, 23, 30, 47, 74, 81, 91. PATRICK ABERCROMBY. in Fife. Francis, the eldest son of Abercromby of Fetterneir, was created Lord Glassford in 1685 ; but as the patent, by an extraordinary restriction, was limited to his own life only, the title did not descend to his children. Patrick Abercromby was born at Forf'ar in 1656, and was educated at the university of St. Andrews, where he took the degree of Doctor in Medicine in 1C85. His family being eminently loyal, the young physician is said to have changed his religion, to please James VII., who consequently made him one of the physicians of the court. A proceeding so adverse to all propriety, however loyal, and accordant with the temper of the times, was speedily and severely punished ; for, at the Revolution, Abercromby was deprived of his appointment. For some years after he appears to have lived abroad ; but he returned to Scotland in the rein of Queen Anne, and devoted himself to the study of national anti- quities. In 1707, he published a translation of M. Beauge's very rare book, L'Histoire de la Guerre d'Ecosse, 1556, under the title of, The History of the Campagnes 1548 and 1549; being an exact account of the Martial Expeditions performed in those days by the Scots and French on the one hand, and the English and their foreign auxiliaries on the other : done in French by Mons. Beauge, a French gentleman ; with an introductory preface by the Translator. In the preface, the ancient alliance between Scotland and France is strenuously asserted. This curious French work, which gives a complete account of the war carried on by the Popish government of Cardinal Beatoun, aided by the French, against the English under Protector Somerset, was reprinted in the original by Mr Smythe of Methven for the Bannatyne Club, 1829, along with a preface, giving an account of Abercromby's translation. The great work of Dr Abercromby is in two volumes, folio, entitled, The Martial Achievements of the Scots Nation. He tells us in the preface, that, not venturing to write regular history or biography, he had resolved to relate the deeds of all the great men of his country, in a less ambitious strain, and with a more minute attention to small facts, than is compatible with those styles of composition. He also, with great modesty, apologises for his manner of writing, by saying, " When my reader is told that 'twas my fate to spend most part of my youth in foreign countries, to have but viewed, en passant, the south part of Britain, and to have been conversant with Roman and French, rather than with English authors, he will not expect from me those modish turns of phrase, nor that exact propriety of words, Scotsmen, by reason of their distance from the foun- tain of custom, so seldom attain to." The first volume of the Martial Achieve- ments was published, in 1711, by Mr Robert Freebairn, aud shows a respectable list of subscribers. About one-half of it is occupied by the early fabulous history of Scotland, in which the author, like almost all men of his time, and especially the Jacobites, was a devout believer. It closes with the end of the reign of Robert Bruce. The second volume appeared, with a still more nume- rous and respectable list of subscribers, in 1715; it was partly printed by Freebairn, and partly by Thomas Ruddiman, who not only corrected the manuscript, but superintended its progress through the press. This is said by Chalmers to have been the first typographical effort of Ruddiman. Aber- cromby's Martial Achievements is upon the whole a very creditable work for a Scottish antiquary of that period ; the author is not superior to the credulity of his age and party, but he is eminently industrious, and his narrative 13 written in an entertaining style. The work shows a wide range of authorities, and is liberally interspersed with controversial discussions of the points most SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. contested by antiquaries. Dr Patrick Abercromby died poor in 171G, or, as other writers say, in 1726, leaving a widow in distressed circumstances. ABERCROMBY, SIR RALPH, a distinguished general officer, under whom the British arms met their first success in the French revolutionary war, was the eldest son of George Abercromby of Tullibody, in Clackmannanshire, a gentleman of ancient and respectable family, and of Mary, daughter of Ralph Dundas of Manor. He was born at Menstrie, in the parish of Logic, on the 7th October, 1734. His education seems to have been regarded with more care than was usually manifested by the Scottish country gentlemen of the early and middle parts of the last century. After passing through the customary course at Rugby, he became a student, first in the university of Edinburgh, and subsequently in that of Gottingen. He entered the army, as cornet in the 3rd dragoon guards, May 23, 1756, and became a lieutenant, in the same regi- ment, in the year 17GO ; which rank he held till April, 1762, when he ob- tained a company in the 3rd horse. In this regiment he rose, in 1770, to the rank of major, and, in 1773, to that of lieutenant-colonel. He was included in the list of brevet colonels in 1780, and, in 1781, was made colonel of the 103rd, or king's Irish infantry, a new regiment, which was broken at the peace in 1783, when Colonel Abercromby was placed on half-pay. It may be noticed, in passing, that he represented the shire of Kinross in the British parliament from 1774 till 1780; but made no attempt to render himself conspi- cuous, either as a party-man or as a politician. In September, 1787, he was promoted to the rank of major-general, and next year obtained the command of the 69th foot. From this corps he was, in 1792, removed to the 6th foot ; from that again to the 5th ; and in November, 1796, to the 2d dragoons, or Scots Greys. On the breaking out of the French revolutionary war, Abercromby had the local rank of lieutenant-general conferred on him, and served with distinguished honour in the campaigns of 1794 and 1795, under the Duke of York. He commanded the advanced guard in the affair of Cateau (April 16, 1794), in which Chapuy, the French general, was taken prisoner, and thirty-five pieces of cannon fell into the hands of the British. In the reverses that followed, the British army escaped entire destruction solely by the masterly manoeuvres of Abercromby, who was second in command. He was wounded at Nimeguen, in the month of October following; notwithstanding which, the arduous service of conducting the retreat through Holland, in the dreadfully severe winter of 1794, was devolved wholly upon him and General Dundas. Than this retreat nothing could be conceived more calamitous. The troops did all that could be expected from them in the situation in which they were placed. Oppressed by numbers, having lost all their stores, they made good their retreat in the face of the foe, amidst the rigours of a singularly severe winter, resembling more that of the arctic circle than that of the north of Germany. For the removal of the sick, nothing could be procured but open waggons, in which they were exposed to the intense severity of the weather, to drifting snows, and heavy falls of sleet and rain. The mortality, of course, was very great. The regiments were so scattered, marching through the snow, that no returns could be made out, and both men and horses were found in great numbers frozen to 1 He was born in 1705, called to the bar in 1728, and died, June 8, 1800, at the advanced age of ninety-five, being the eldest member of the college of justice. SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. death. "The march," says an eye-witness, "was marked by scenes of the most calamitous nature. We could not proceed a hundred yards without seeing the dead bodies of men, women, children, and horses, in every direction. One scene," adds the writer, " made an impression on my mind, which time will never be able to efface. Near a cart, a little further in the common, we per- i ceived a stout-looking man and a beautiful young woman, with an infant about seven months old at the breast, all three frozen dead. The mother had most certainly died in the act of suckling her child, as, with one breast exposed, she lay upon the drifted snow, the milk, to all appearance, in a stream drawn from the nipple by the babe, and instantly congealed. The infant seemed as if its lips had just then been disengaged, and it reposed its little head upon the mother's bosom, with an overflow of milk frozen as it trickled down from its mouth. Their countenances were perfectly composed and fresh, as if they had only been in a sound and tranquil slumber." The British army reached De- venter, after incredible exertion, on the 27th of January, 1795 ; but they were not able to maintain the position, being closely pursued by a well- appointed army, upwards of fifty thousand strong. They continued their progress, alternately fighting and retreating, till the end of March, when the main body, now reduced one-half, reached Bremen, where they were embarked for England. Nothing could exceed the vigilance, patience, and perseverance of General Abercromby during this retreat, in which he was ably seconded by General Dundas and Lord Cathcart ; nor did the troops ever hesitate, when ordered, to halt, face about, and fight, even in the most disastrous and distress- ing circumstances. While the French were making those gigantic efforts at home, which con- founded all previous calculations in European warfare, they also made unex- pected struggles abroad. They repossessed themselves in the West Indies of Guadeloupe and St. Lucia, made good a landing upon several points in the island of Martinique, and made partial descents on the islands of St. Vincent, Grenada, and Marie Galante. In these various incursions they plundered, in the several islands, property to the amount of one thousand eight hundred millions of livres (about 72,000,000). To put an end to these depredations, a fleet was fitted out in the autumn of the year 1795, for the purpose of con- veying a military force to the West Indies; sufficient for not only protecting what yet remained, but recovering that which had been lost. The charge of the land troops was given to Sir Ralph Abercromby, with the appointment of commander-in-chief of the forces in the West Indies. In consequence of this appointment, he took the command, and hastened the embarkation ; and, although the equinox overtook them, and, in the squalls that usually attend it, several of the transports were lost in the Channel, the fleet made the best of its way to the West Indies, and by the month of March, 1796, the troops were landed and in active operation. St. Lucia was speedily captured by a detach- ment of the army under Sir John Moore, as was St. Vincent and Grenada by another under General Knox. The Dutch colonies, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, on the coast of Guiana, likewise fell into the hands of the British about the same time almost without stroke of sword. The remainder of 1796 having been thus employed, Sir Ralph made preparations for attacking, early in 1797, the Spanish island of Trinidad. For this purpose, the fleet sailed with all the transports, from the island of Curacao on the morning of the 15th February, 1797, and next day passed through the Barns into the Gulf of Bria, SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. where they found the Spanish admiral, with four sail of the line and one frigate, at anchor, under cover of the island of Gaspagrande, which was strongly forti- fied. The British squadron immediately anchored opposite, and almost within gun-shot of the Spanish ships. The frigates, with the transports, were sent to anchor higher up the bay, at the distance of about five miles from the town of Port d'Espagne. Dispositions were immediately made for attacking the town and the ships of war next morning by break of day. By two o'clock of the morning, however, the Spanish squadron was observed to be on fire. The ships burned very fast, one only escaping the conflagration, which was taken possession of by the British. The Spaniards, at the same time that they had set their ships of war on fire, evacuated the island. The troops, under Sir Ralph Abercromby, were of course landed without opposition, and the whole colony fell into the hands of the British. Sir Ralph next made an attack upon Porto Rico, in which he was unsuccessful, and shortly after he returned to Britain, and was received with every mark of respect. He had, in his absence, been complimented with the colonelcy of the second dragoons or Scots Greys, and nominated governor of the Isle of Wight. He was now (1707) advanced to the dignity of the Bath, raised to the rank of a lieutenant-general, and in- vested with the lucrative governments of Fort George and Fort Augustus. The disturbed state of Ireland at this time calling for the utmost vigilance, Sir Ralph Abercromby was appointed to the command of the forces in that unhappy country, where he exerted himself most strenuously, though with less success than could have been wished, to preserve order where any degree of it yet remained, and to restore it where it had been violated. He was particularly anxious, by the strictest attention to discipline, to restore the reputation of the army ; for, according to his own emphatic declaration, it had become more for- midable to its friends than to its enemies. During this command he did not require to direct any military operations in person; and the Marquis Corn wall is having received the double appointment of lord-lieutenant and Commander-in- chief of the forces, Sir Ralph transferred his head-quarters to Edinburgh, ami, on 31st of May, assumed the command of the forces in Scotland, to which he had been appointed. In the year 1799, an expedition having been planned for Holland, for the purpose of restoring the Prince of Orange to the Stadtholdership, Sir Ralph was again selected to take the chief command. The troops destined for this service being assembled on the coast of Kent, sailed on the 13th of August, under convoy of the fleet which was commanded by Vice-Admiral Mitchell ; and, after encountering heavy gales, came to anchor off the Texel, on the 22d of the month. On the 27th, the troops were disembarked to the south-west of the Helder point, without opposition. Scarcely had they begun to move, how- ever, when they were attacked by General Daendels, and a warm, but irregular, action was kept up from five o'clock in the morning till five in the afternoon, after which the enemy retired, leaving the British in possession of a ridge of eand-hills stretching along the coast from south to north. In this day's evolu- tions, the enemy lost upwards of one thousand men, and the British about half that number. Encouraged by this success, Sir Ralph Abercromby determined to seize upon the Helder next morning, when he would be in possession of a seaport, an arsenal, and a fleet. The brigades of Generals Moore and Burrard were ordered *to be in readiness to make the attack early in the morning; but the garrison was withdrawn through the night, leaving a considerable train of SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. artillery, a naval magazine, thirteen ships of war, and three Indiamen, which fell into the hands of the British without opposition. Admiral Mitchell, having shipped pilots at the Helder, immediately stood down into the Texel, and offered battle to the Dutch fleet lying there ; the whole of which, consisting of twelve sail of the line, surrendered to the British admiral, the sailors refusing to fight, and compelling their officers to give up the ships for the service of the Prince of Orange. Taking the surrender of the fleet as the criterion of Dutch feeling, the most extravagant hopes of the success of the expedition were enter- tained by the people of England. The sentiments of the people of Holland, generally, were not as yet in unison with those of her sailors, and every pre- caution was taken for defence. The British army, in the meantime, left the sand-hills, and took up a new position, their right extending to Petten, on the German Ocean, and their left to Oude Sluys on the Zuyder Zee. A fertile country was thus laid open to the invaders; while the canal of Zuyper, imme- diately in front, contributed to strengthen their position, enabling them to remain on the defensive, until the arrival of additional forces. At day-break of llth September, the combined Dutch and French army attacked the centre and right of the British lines, from St. Martins to Petten, with a force of 10,000 men, which advanced in three columns ; the right, com- posed of Dutch troops, commanded by General Daendels, against St. Martins ; the centre, under De Monceau, upon Zuyper Sluys; and the left, com- posed entirely of French troops, under General Brune, upon Petten. The attack, particularly on the left and centre, was made with the most daring intrepidity, but was repulsed by the British, and the enemy lost upwards of a thousand men. On this occasion, General Sir John Moore was opposed to General Brune, and distinguished himself by the most masterly manoeuvres; and, had the British been sufficiently numerous to follow up their advantage, the United Provinces might have shaken off the French yoke even at this early period. The want of numbers was felt too late ; but, to remedy the evil, the Russian troops, engaged for the expedition, were hastily embarked at the ports of Cronstadt and Revel, to the number of seventeen thousand, under the com- mand of General D'Hermann, and were speedily upon the scene of action. The Duke of York now arrived as commander-in-chief ; and his army, with the Russians and some battalions of Dutch troops, formed of deserters from the Batavian army, and volunteers from the Dutch ships, amounted to upwards of thirty-six thousand men, a force considerably superior to that under Generals Daendels and Brune. In consequence of this, the Duke of York, in concert with D'Hermann, made an immediate attack upon the enemy's position, which was on the heights of Camperdown, and along the high sand-hills, extending from the sea, in front of Petten, to the town of Bergen-op-zoom. Any defi- ciency of numbers on the part of the enemy was far more than counterbalanced by the advantages of their position ; improved, as it was, by strong entrench- ments at the intermediate villages, and by the nature of the ground, intersected by wet ditches and canals, whose bridges had been removed, and the roads ren- dered impassable, either by being broken up, or by means of felled trees stuck in the earth, and placed horizontally, so as to present an almost impenetrable barrier. The attack, however, notwithstanding all disadvantages, was made with the most determined resolution, early on the morning of the 19th of September, and was successful at all points. By eight o'clock in the morning, the Russians, under D'Hermann, had made themselves masters of Bergen-op-zoom; but they no 8 SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. sooner found the place evacuated, than they flew upon the spoil, and began to plunder the citizens, whom they had professedly come to relieve. The vigilant enemy seized the opportunity to rally his broken battalions, and, being rein- forced from the garrison at Alkmaav, attacked the dispersed Russians with so much impetuosity, that the latter were driven from Bergen-op-zoom to .Schorel, with the loss of Generals D'Hermann and Tcherchekoff, wounded and taken prisoners. This failure of the Russians compelled the other three columns of the British army to abandon the positions they had already stormed, and return to the station they had left in the morning. For this disappointment three thousand prisoners taken in the engagement was but a poor recompense ; while the impression made upon the minds of the Dutch, by the conduct of the Rus- sians, was incalculably injurious to the objects of the expedition. The conflict was renewed on the 2d of October, by another attack 011 the whole line of the enemy, the troops advancing, as before, in four columns, under Generals Aber- cromby, D'Esson, Dundas, and Pulteney. The centre ascended the band-hills at Campe, and carried the heights of Schorel ; and, after a vigorous contest, tlie Russians and British obtained possession of the whole range of sand-hills in the neighbourhood of Bergen-op-zoom ; but the severest conflict, and that which decided the fate of the day, was sustained by the first column under Sir Ralph Abercromby. He had marched without opposition to within a mile of Egmont- op-Zee, where a large body of cavalry and infantry waited to receive him. Here Sir John Moore led his brigade to the charge in person ; he was met by a con nter-charge of the enemy, and the conflict was maintained till evening with unexampled fury. The Marquis of Huntly, who, with his regiment (the ninety-second), was eminently distinguished, received a wound by a musket- ball in the shoulder ; and General Sir John Moore, after receiving two severe wounds, was reluctantly carried off the field. Sir Ralph Abercromby had two horses shot under him, but he continued to animate the troops by his example, and the most desperate efforts of the enemy were unavailing. Their loss in this day's engagement was upwards of four thousand men. During the night they abandoned tbeir posts on the Lange Dyke and at Bergen-op-zoom, and next day the British took up the positions that had been occupied by the French at Alkmaar and Egmont-op-Zee. Brune having taken up a strong position be- tween Beverwyck and the Zuyder Zee, it was determined to dislodge him before tlie arrival of his daily-expected reinforcements. In the first movements made for this purpose the British met with little opposition ; but the Russians, under General D'Esson, attempting to gain a height near Buccum, were sud- denly charged by an overwhelming body of the enemy. Sir Ralph Abercromby, observing the critical situation of the Russians, hastened with his column to support them. The enemy also sent up fresh forces, and the action, uudesignedly by either party, became general along the whole line, from Lemmen to the sea, and was contested on both sides with the most determined obstinacy. About two o'clock in the afternoon, the right and centre of the Anglo- Russian army began to lose ground, and retire upon Egmont ; where, with the co-operation of tlie brigade under Major-General Coote, they succeeded in keeping the enemy in check during the remainder of the day. Evening closed over the comba- tants, darkened by deluges of rain; yet the work of mutual destruction knew no intermission. The fire of musketry, which ran in undulating lines along the hills, with the thunder-flash of the artillery, and the fiery train of the death-charged shell, lighted up with momentary and fitful blaze the whole SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. horizon. About ten o'clock at night, worn out by such a lengthened period of exertion, though their mutual hostility was not in the least abated, the con- tending parties ceased fighting, and the British were left in possession of the ground upon which they had fought, with upwards of two thousand of their companions lying dead around them. General Brune was, in the course of the night or next morning, reinforced by an addition of six thousand men, and the ground he occupied was by nature and art rendered nearly impregnable. The British lay through the night exposed to the weather, which was terrible, on the naked sand-hills ; their clothing drenched, and their arms and ammunition rendered useless by the rain. Nor was the inhospitality of the people less than that of the elements; the greater part being violently hostile, and the remainder sunk in supine indifference. Retreat was therefore a measure of necessity, and next night, the 7th of October, about ten o'clock, amidst a deluge of rain, the troops marched back to their former station at Petteu and Alkmaar, which they reached without immediate pursuit or any serious loss. To embark, how- ever, upon such a shore, and in the face of such an enemy, without great loss, was impossible ; and, to prevent the unnecessary effusion of blood, an armistice was proposed by the Duke of York, till the troops should be quietly embarked. The French general was willing to accede to the proposal, provided the Dutch fleet were restored, and all forts, dykes, &c., &c., left as they had been taken; or, if any improvements had been made upon them, in their improved state. To the first part of the proposal the duke utterly refused for a moment to listen ; and, being in possession of the principal dykes, he threatened to break them down and inundate the country. The fleet was not given up ; but in lieu thereof, eight thousand French and Dutch prisoners, that had been taken pre- vious to this campaign, were to be restored, with all that had been taken in it. the Dutch seamen excepted. The troops were instantly embarked, and safely landed in England, with the exception of the Russians, who were landed in the Llands of Guernsey and Jersey. Though this expedition totally failed in its main object the liberation of Holland it was not without advantage. The capture of the Dutch fleet, in the then state of affairs, was of very considerable importance. Nor was the impression it left upon the enemy of the superior skill of British officers, particularly of the subject of this memoir, and the daring valour of British troops, without its use in the succeeding periods of the war. Sir Ralph Abercromby, now a universal favourite, and esteemed the most skilful officer in the British service, was appointed in the month of June, 1800, to command the troops sent out upon a secret expedition to the Medi- terranean, and which were for the time quartered on the island of Minorca, where he arrived on the 22d of June. The very next day the troops were embarked for Leghorn, where they arrived on the 9th of July ; but in conse- quence of- -an annistice between the French and the Austrians, they were not allowed to land. Part of them now proceeded to Malta, and the remainder sailed back to Minorca. Sir Ralph himself arrived again at that island on the 26th of July, and on the 3d of September the troops were again embarke.' 1 , and on the 14th the fleet came to anchor off Europa point in the bay of Gib- raltar. On the 20th the armament sailed for the bay of Tetuan to procure water, and on the 23d returned to Gibraltar. In a few days the fleet was again ordered to rendezvous in the bay of Tetuan ; and, on the 30th of October, the whole, consisting of upwards of two hundred sail, came to anchor off Cadiz, and 10 SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. preparations were made for landing the troops without delay. On the 6th the troops got into the boats, and everything was ready for the disembarkation. In consequence of a flag of truce from the shore, the landing was delayed, and in the afternoon the troops returned to their respective ships. The negotiations between the commanders having failed, the order was renewed for disembarking the troops next day. This order was again countermanded about midnight ; the morning became stormy, and at break of day the signal was made for the fleet to weigh, and by the afternoon the whole fleet was again under sail. Part of the forces were now ordered for Portugal under the command of general Sir James Pulteney, and the remainder for Malta, where they arrived about the middle of November. Than this sailing backwards and forwards, nothing was ever exhibited more strongly indicative of extreme folly and absolute imbecility in the national councils. It was now resolved by the British government to drive the French out of Egypt, and the armament, which had uselessly rolled about the Medi- terranean for so many months, was appointed for that purpose. Sir Ralph Abercromby, accordingly, embarked at Malta on the 20th of December for the bay of Marmorice, on the coast of Caramania ; where cavalry horses were to be procured, and stores collected for the expedition, which, it was cal- culated, would sail for Alexandria by the 1st of January, 1801. Many things, however, occurred to retard their preparations. Among others of a like nature, three hundred horses, purchased by order of Lord Elgin, the British ambassador at Constantinople, were found, when they arrived at Marmorice, so small and stf galled in their backs, as to be of no use, so that it was found necessary to shoot some, and to sell others at the low price of a dollar a-piece. It was believed that Lord Elgin had paid for a very different description of horses, but the per- sons to whose care they had been confided had found their account in changing them by the way. Good horses were procured by parties sent into the country for that purpose ; but the sailing of the expedition was in consequence delayed till the end of February, instead of the first of January, as had been originally intended ; and from the state of the weather, and other casualties, the landing could not be attempted before the 8th of March, on which day it was accom- plished in Aboukir Bay, in a manner that reflected the highest honour on the British troops. During this delay Bonaparte had found means to reinforce his army in Egypt, and furnish it with all necessary stores ; and the weather, pre- venting the immediate disembarkation of the troops, enabled the French to make every preparation to receive them. The sand-hills which form the coast, they had lined with numerous bodies of infantry, and every height was bristling with artillery. A most tremendous discharge of grape-shot and shells from the bat- teries, and of musketry from the infantry that lined the shore, seemed for a moment to stay the progress of the boats as they approached. But it was only for a moment. The rowers swept through the iron tempest to the beacli ; the troops leaped on shore, formed as they advanced, and rushing up the slippery declivity without firing a shot, drove the enemy from their position at the point of the bayonet. Successive bodies, as they were disembarked, proceeded to the help of their precursors, and, in spite of every obstruction, the whole army was landed before night ; and Sir Ralph Abercromby advancing three miles into the country, took up a position with his right resting upon lake Madyeh or Aboukir, and his left stretching to the Mediterranean. On the 12th he moved forward to attack the French, who were most advantageously posted on a ridge of sand- SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. \\ hills, their right towards the sea, and their left resting upon the canal of Alex- andria. On the morning of the 13th, the army marched in two lines by the left, to turn the right flank of the enemy. Aware of this, the French, with their whole cavalry, and a considerable body of infantry, poured down from the heights and attacked the heads of both lines, but were repulsed by the advanced guard, consisting of the 90th and 92nd regiments, with incomparable gallantry. The first line then formed into two, and advanced, while the second line turned the right of the French army, and drove it from its position. The enemy, however, made a regular retreat, and contested every inch of ground till they had reached the heights of Nicopolis, which form the principal defence of Alex- andria. Anxious to carry these heights, Sir Ralph Abercromby unfortu- nately ordered forward the reserve under Sir John Moore, and the second line under general Hutcheson, to attack (the latter the right, and the former the left) both flanks at once. Advancing into the open plain, they were exposed to the whole range of the enemy's shot, which they had it not in their power to return; and, after all, the position was found to be commanded by the guns of the forts of Alexandria, so that it could not have been kept though they had stormed it. They were accordingly withdrawn, but with a most serious loss of men ; and the British army took up the ground from which the enemy had been tlriven, occupying a position with its right to the sea and its left to the canal of Alexandria; a situation of great advantage, as it cut off all communication with Alexandria, except by the way of the Desert. In this action, Sir Ralph was nearly enveloped in the charge of the French cavalry, and was only saved by the intrepidity of the 90th regiment. The garrison of Aboukir surrenderee! on ihe 18th ; but to counterbalance this advantage, the French commander-in-chief, Menou, arrived at Alexandria from Cairo on the 20th, with a reinforcement of nine thousand men. Expecting to take the British by surprise, Menou, next morning, March the 2Jst, between three and four o'clock, attacked their position with his whole force, amounting to from eleven to twelve thousand men. The action was commenced by a false attack on the left, their main strength being directed against the right, upon which they advanced in great force and with a prodigious noise, shouting, "Vive la France ! Vive la Republique !" They were received, however, with perfect coolness by the British troops, who not only checked the impetuosity of the infantry, but repulsed several charges of cavalry. Greater courage was perhaps never exhibited than on this occasion : the different corps of both nations rivalled each other in the most determined bravery, and pre- sented the extraordinary spectacle of an engagement in front, flanks, and rear, at the same time ; so much were the contending parties intermingled. Nine hundred of Bonaparte's best soldiers, and from their tried valour denominated Invincibles, succeeded in turning the right of the British, between the walls of a large ruin and a battery. Three times did they storm the battery, and three times were the successive parties exterminated. Getting at last into the rear of the reserve, the 42nd and the 28th regiments charged them with the bayonet, and drove them step by btep into the inclosure of the ruin ; where, between six and seven hundred of them being already stretched lifeless on the ground, the remainder called out for quarter, and were made prisoners. Not one of them returned. Equally determined was their attack on the centre, and it was there repelled with equal success. A heavy column having broken through the line the cavalry accompanying it wheeled to their left and charged the rear of the reserve ; but this charge was broken by the accidental state of the ground, which 12 SIR RALPH ABISKCROMBY. had been excavated into pit-holes about three feet deep for the men to sleep in, before the arrival of their camp equipage. Over these holes they had to make their charge, and in consequence were completely routed, more than three hun- dred of them being left dead on the spot. Finding all his movements frustrated, Menou at length ordered a retreat, which he was able to effect in good order; the British having too few cavalry to pursue. His loss was supposed to be between three and four thousand men, including many officers, among whom were treneral Raize, commander of the cavalry, who fell in the field, and two generals who died of their woiinds. The loss of the British was also heavy, upwards of seventy officers being killed, wounded, and missing. Among these was the lamented commander-in-chief. Having hastened, on the first alarm, towards the cannonading, Sir Ralph must have ridden straight among the enemy, who had already broken the front line and got into its rear. It was not yet day, and, being unable to distinguish friend from foe, he must have been embar- rassed among the assailants, but he was extricated by the valour of his troops. To the first soldier that came up to him, he said, " Soldier, if you know me, don't name me." A French dragoon, at the moment, conjecturing the prize he had lost, rode up to Sir Ralph, and made a cut at him, but not being near enough, only cut through the clothes, and grazed the skin with the point of his sabre. The dragoon's horse wheeling about, brought him again to the charge, and he made a second attempt by a lounge, but the sabre passed between Sir Ralph's side and his right arm. The dragoon being at the instant shot dead, the sabre remained with the general. About the same time it was discovered that he had been wounded in the thigh, and was entreated to have the wound examined ; but he treated it as a trifle, and would not for a moment leave the field. No sooner, however, had the enemy begun to retreat, and the excitement of feeling under which he had been acting to subside, than he fainted from pain and the loss of blood. His wound was now examined, and a large incision made in order to extract the ball, but it could not be found. He was then put upon a litter, and carried aboard the Foudroyant, where he languished till the 28th, when he died. His body was interred in the burial ground of the commandery of the Grand Master, under the walls of the castle of St Elan, near the town of Valetta in Malta. Of the character of Sir Ralph Abercromby there can be but one opinion. Bred to arms almost from his infancy, he appeared to be formed for command. His dispositions were always masterly, and his success certain. He had served in America, in the West Indies, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, in Holland, and in Egypt, and had in all of these countries gained himself great distinction. In the two latter countries, especially, he performed services that were of incalculable advantage to his country. The battle of the 21st of March, or of Alexandria, while it decided the fate of Egypt, left an impression of British skill and of British valour upon the minds of both her friends and her enemies, that materially con- tributed to the splendid results of a contest longer in continuance, and involving interests of greater magnitude, than Britain had ever before been engaged in. The manner in which he repressed the licentiousness of the troops in Ireland, was at once magnanimous and effective ; and he ended a life of dignified exertion by a death worthy of a hero. "We have sustained an irreparable loss," says his suc- cessor, "in the person of our never enough to be lamented commander-in-chief, Sir Ralph Abercromby ; but it is some consolation to those who tenderly loved him, that, as his life was honourable, so was his death glorious. His memory JOHN ABERNETHY. 13 will be recorded in the annals of his country, will he sacred to every British I soldier, and embalmed in the recollection of a grateful posterity.'" Sir Ralph Abercromby was married to Mary Anne, daughter of John Menzies of Fernton, Perthshire ; by whom he had issue four sons and three daughters, who survived him. On the official account reaching England of the fate of her lamented husband, his widow was elevated to the peerage, May 28, 1801, as Baroness Abercromby of Aboukir and Tullibody, with remainder to the heirs- male of the deceased general ; and, on the recommendation of his majesty, the House of Commons, without one dissentient voice, granted an annuity of two thousand pounds to Lady Abercromby, and the next two succeeding male heirs of the body of Sir Ralph Abercromby, to whom the title of Baron Abercromby should descend. The House of Commons, farther, sensible of the great merits of this distinguished British commander, voted a monument to his memory, at the public expense, which was subsequently erected in St Paul's cathedral. ABER'NETHY, JOHN*, an eminent writer on physiology. The birth and parentage of this gentleman were so obscure, that it is impossible to say with certainty whether he was a native of Ireland or of Scotland. It is even affirmed that he was himself ignorant of the country of his birth. Upon the supposition that he was born in Scotland, his name is introduced in the present work. The date of his birth is given loosely as 1703-64. His parents having brought him in his infancy to London, he commenced his education at a day-school in Lothbury, where he acquired the elements of classical literature. Having afterwards been bound apprentice to Mr Charles Blick, surgeon to Ft Bartholomew's Hospital, lie had the advantage of attending that noble institution, where he eagerly seized every opportunity of making himself practically acquainted with his profession. He also had the advantage of attending the lectures of Mr John Hunter, at the time when that gentleman was commencing the development of those great discoveries which have made his name so famous. The curiosity which those discoveries excited in the public at large, was felt in an uncommon degree by Mr Abernethy, whose assiduity and ardour as a pupil attracted the notice of the lecturer, and rendered the latter his friend for life. While as yet a very young practitioner, his reputation procured for Mr Abernethy the situation of assistant-surgeon at St Bartholomew's, and he soon after commenced a course of lectures in the hospital, which, though not very successful at first, became in time the most frequented of any in London, so as to lay the foundation of a medical school of the highest reputation in connection with this institution. On the death of Sir Charles Blick, his former master, Mr Abernethy, now considered as the best teacher of anatomy, physiology, and surgery in the metropolis, was elected surgeon to the hospital. The first publications of Mr Abernethy were a few Physiological Essays, and one on Lumbar Abscess, which, with some additions, formed his first volume, published 1793-97, in 8vo, under the title of "Surgical and Physiological 1 Thefollowing panegyric upon Sir Ralph in another character, was written before his death: "As a country gentleman, ever attentive to all within the circle of his movement, he stands high in the estimation of his neighbours and dependents; and when his military glory shall have fallen into oblivion, it will be gratefully remembered that he was the friend of the destitute poor, the patron of useful knowledge, and the promoter of education among the meanest of his cottagers: as an instance it may be mentioned, that in the village of Tullibody, on his paternal estate, a reading school, under his immediate inspection, was established many years back." Campbell's Journey through Scotland, 4to, 1802, vol. ii. 14 JOHN ABEKNETiiV. Essays." These were characterized by the same strong sense, and plain and forcible illustration, which marked everything that flowed from his tongue and pen till the end of his life. In 1804 appeared another volume, entitled, "Sur- gical Observations, containing a classification of tumours, with cases to illustrate the history of each species ; an account of Diseases," &c. ; and, in 180G, " Sur- gical Observations, Part Second, containing an account of Disorders of the Health in general, and of the digestive organs in particular, which accompany local diseases, and obstruct their cure." The fame of these treatises soon spread, not only throughout England, but over the continent of Europe ; and the French surgeons, especially, did homage to the masterly spirit they evinced. Bold and successful operations, practical and lucid descriptions, original and comprehensive views, all combined to enhance the great reputation of the author, and to elevate the character of the national school of which he was so bright an ornament. In 1814, Mr Abernethy received what might be considered as the highest honour which his profession had to bestow, in being appointed anatomical lec- turer to the Royal College of Surgeons. An anecdote illustrative of his sound integrity is told in reference to this era of his life. A fellow of the college having remarked to him, that now they should have something new, Mr Aber- nethy seriously asked him what he meant. " Why," said the other, "of course you will brush up the lectures which you have been so long delivering at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and let us have them in an improved form." " Do you take me for a fool or a knave ? " rejoined Mr Abernethy, " I have always given the students at the Hospital that to which they are entitled the best produce of my mind. If I could have made my lectures to them better, I would instantly have made them so. I will give the College of Surgeons precisely the same lectures, down to the smallest details." In the year of this honourable appointment, he published, "An Inquiry into the Probability and Rationality of Mr Hunter's Theory of Life ; being the subject of the two first lectures delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of London." The aim of these lectures was to elucidate the doctrine previously laid down by Mr Hunter, that " life, in general, is some principle of activity added by the will of Omnipotence to organized structure, an immaterial soul being superadded, in man, to the structure and vitality which he possesses in common with other animals." Of this work, it is generally allowed that the intentions are better than the philosophy. Previously to this period, Mr Abernethy had published other treatises besides those already named. One of the most remarkable was, " Surgical Observa- tions on the Constitutional Origin and Treatment of Local Diseases, and on Aneurism," 8vo, 1809. His memorable cases of tying the iliac artery for aneurism are detailed in this volume ; cases which may almost be said to fonn an era in adventurous surgical experiment. Mr Abernethy also wrote works on "Diseases resembling Syphilis, and on Diseases of the Urethra;" "On Injuries of the Head, and Miscellaneous Subjects ;" and another volume of Physiological Essays. He was likewise the author of the anatomical and physiological articles in Rees's Cyclopedia, previous to the article " Canal." Among his various accomplishments, must be ranked a considerable acquaintance with chemistry ; and one of his numerous honours is the having, in company with Mr Howard, discovered fulminating mercury. Besides his business as a lecturer, Mr Abernethy enjoyed a vast and lucrative JOHN ABERNETHY, 15 i practice as a surgeon. His manner in both capacities was marked by many eccentricities, but particularly in the latter. He could not endure the tedious and confused narratives which patients are apt to lay before a consulting surgeon, and, in checking these, was not apt to regard much the rules of good-breeding. Considerable risks were thus encountered for the sake of his advice ; but this was generally so excellent, that those who required it were seldom afraid to hazard the slight offence to their feelings with which it was liable to be accom- panied. Many anecdotes of Mr Abernethy's rencounters with his patients are preserved in the profession. The two following are given in Sir James Eyre's recent work, " The Stomach and its Difficulties :" " A very talkative lady, who had wearied the temper of Mr Abernethy, which was at all times impatient of gabble, was told by him, the first moment that he could get a chance of speaking, to be good enough to put out her tongue. * Now, pray, madam,' said he, playfully, ''keep it out/ The hint was taken. He rarely met with his match, but on one occasion he fairly owned that he had. He was sent for to an innkeeper, who had had a quarrel with his wife, and who had scored his face with her nails, so that the poor man was bleeding, and much disfigured. Mr Abernethy considered this an opportunity not to be lost for admonishing the offender, and said, ' Madam, are you not ashamed of yourself to treat your husband thus ; the husband, who is the head of all, your head, madam, in fact ?' ' Well, doctor,' fiercely retorted the virago, ' and may I not scratch my own head?' Upon this her friendly adviser, after giving directions for the benefit of the patient, turned upon his heel, and confessed himself beaten for once." But abruptness and rudeness were not his only eccentricities. He carried prac- tical benevolence to a pitch as far from the common line as any of his other peculiarities. Where poverty and disease prevented patients from waiting upon him in his own house, he was frequently known, not only to visit them con- stantly, and at inconvenient distances, without fee or reward, but generously to supply them from his own purse with what their wants required. Perhaps the most striking, out of the numerous anecdotes which have been related of him, in illustration of his eccentricities, is one descriptive of his courtship, or rather of his no-courtship. " While attending a lady for several weeks, he observed those admirable qualifications in her daughter, which he truly esteemed to be calculated to make the marriage state happy. Accordingly, on a Saturday, when taking leave of his patient, he addressed her to the following purport : 'You are now so well that I need not see you after Monday next, when I shall come and pay you my farewell visit. But, in the meantime, I wish you and your daughter seriously to consider the proposal I am now about to make. It is abrupt and unceremonious, I am aware ; but the excessive occupation of my time, by my professional duties, affords me no leisure to accomplish what I desire by the more ordinary course of attention and solicitation. My annual receipts amount to , and I can settle on my wife; my character ia generally known to the public, so that you may readily ascertain what it is. I have seen in your daughter a tender and affectionate child, an assiduous and careful nurse, and a gentle and ladylike member of a family ; such a person must be all that a husband could covet, and I offer my hand and fortune for her acceptance. On Monday, when I call, I shall expect your determination ; for I really have not time for the routine of courtship.' In this humour the lady was wooed and won, and the union proved fortunate in every respect. A hap- pier couple never existed." 16 ALEXANDER ADAM. After a life of great activity, and which proved of much immediate and remote service to mankind, the subject of this memoir expired, at Eafield, on the 20th of April, 1831. ADAM, ALEXANDER, an eminent grammarian and writer on Roman antiqui- ties, was born at Coats of Burgie, in the parish of Rafford, and county of Moray, about the month of June, 1741. His father, John Adam, rented one of those small farms which were formerly so common in the north of Scotland. In his earlier years, like many children of his own class, and even of a class higher removed above poverty, he occasionally tended his father's cattle. Being des- tined by his parents, poor as they were, for a learned profession, he was kept at the parish school till he was thought fit to come forward as a bursar, at the university of Aberdeen. He made this attempt, but failed, and was requested by the judges to go back and study for another year at school. This incident only stimulated him to fresh exertions. He was prevented, however, from renewing his attempt at Aberdeen, by the representations of the Rev. Mr Wat- son, a minister at Edinburgh, and a relation of his mother, who induced him to try his fortune in the metropolis. He removed thither early in the year 175U; but, it appears, without any assured means of supporting himself during the progress of his studies. For a considerable time, while attending the classes at the college, the only means of subsistence he enjoyed, consisted of the small sum of one guinea per quarter, which he derived from Mr Alan Macconochie, (after- wards Lord Meadowbank), for assisting him in the capacity of a tutor. The details of his system of life at this period, as given by his biographer Mr Hen- derson, are painfully interesting. " He lodged in a small room at Restalrig, iu the north-eastern suburbs ; and for this accommodation he paid fourpence a- week. All his meals, except dinner, uniformly consisted of oat-meal made into porridge, together with small beer, of which he only allowed himself half a bottle at a time. When he wished to dine, he purchased a penny loaf at the nearest baker's shop ; and, if the day was fair, he would despatch his meal in a walk to the Meadows or Hope Park, which ia adjoining to the southern part of the city ; but if the weather was foul, he had recourse to some long and lonely stair, which he would climb, eating his dinner at every step. By this means all expense for cookery was avoided, and he wasted neither coal nor candles ; for, when he was chill, he used to run till his blood began to glow, and his evening studies were always prosecuted under the roof of some one or other of his companions." There are many instances, we believe, among Scottish students, of the most rigid self-denial, crowned at length by splendid success ; but there is certainly no case known in which the self-denial was so chastened, and the triumph so grand, as that of Dr Adam. In 1761, when he was exactly twenty, he stood a trial for the situation of head teacher in George Watson's Hospital, Edinburgh, and was successful. In this place he is said to have continued about three years ; during which, lie was anxiously engaged in cultivating an intimacy with the classics reading, with great care, and in a critical manner, the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Cicero, and Livy. His views were now directed towards the church, and he was on the eve of being licensed as a preacher of the gospel, when suddenly a prospect opened before him of becoming assistant, with the hope of being eventually the successor, of Mr Matheson. rector of the High School. This appointment he obtained, and in 1771 the increased infirmities of Mr Matheson threw the whole of this charge into tho hands of Mr Adam. . Loll FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE HIGH SCHOOL . EDINBURGH. ALEXANDER ADAM. 17 The time when he assumed tiiis respectable office was very fortunate. Every department of knowledge in Scotland was at this period adorned by higher names than had ever before graced it ; and hence the office of Master in the principal elementary school of the country presented to a man of superior qualifications ft fair opportunity of distinguishing himself. This opportunity was not lost upon Mr Adam. He devoted himself with singular assiduity to his duties ; and, under his auspices, the school gradually increased in numbers and reputa- tion. Soon after his appointment, he began to compose a series of works to facilitate the study of the Latin language. His Rudiments of Latin and English Grammar were published in 1772, and, though composed in a style which appeared to the generality of teachers as a dreadful schism and heresy, met with the approbation of a discerning few, whose praise was sufficient to overbalance the censure of the multitude. His offence consisted in the novel attempt to teach the grammatical rules of Latin in English prose, instead of Latin prose or verse, which latter had been the time-honoured fashion of the schools both of England and Scotland, since the days of the Reformation. T.he dariiug innovator was assailed with a storm of abuse by numerous individuals, more especially by those of his own profession. Among those who took an active part in condemning his work, Dr Gilbert Stuart was very conspicuous. This extraordinary litterateur was a relation of Ruddiman; and, as an additional incentive to his hostility, conceived that Adam had gained the rectorship of the High School more by interest than by merit. He accordingly filled the periodical works of the day with ridicule and abuse directed against the unfortunate grammar. Amongst other pasquinades, appeared an account, in Latin, of a Roman funeral, in which that work was personified as the dead body, while the chief mourner was meant to represent Mr Adam, sorrowing for the untimely fate of his best-beloved child. The other persons officiating are introduced under the technical terms in use among the ancient Romans ; and, to heighten the ridicule, and give it aid from local circumstances, the ingenious satirist placed in front of the mourners, a poor lunatic of the name of Duff, well known in Edinburgh at the time for his punctual attendance at the head of all funeral processions. While his work was still the subject of censure, the ingenious author was partly compensated for all his sufferings by a degree of LL.D., which was conferred upon him by the College of Edinburgh, in 1780. Some years after, the grammar began gradually to make its way in schools, and finally he had the satisfaction of seeing it adopted in his own seminary. Among the great names which at an early period had sanctioned it with their approbation, are those of Lord Kames, Bishop Lowth, and Dr Vin- cent, Master of St Paul's school. The next work of Dr Adam is entitled, A Summary of Geography and His- tory, but the date of the first edition is not mentioned by his biographer. In 1791, he published his excellent compendium of Roman Antiquities, and in 1800 his Classical Biography ; for the copyright of the former he received 600, and for that of the latter 300. Dr Adam's last, and perhaps his most laborious work, was his Latin Dictionary, published in 1806. Towards the beginning, his illustrations are brief, but, as he proceeds, they gradually become more copious. It was his intention to add an English-and-Latin part, and to enlarge the other to a considerable extent. In this favourite plan he had made some progress at the time of his death. On the 13th of December, 1809, Dr Adam was seized in the High School with 18 ROBERT ADAM. an alarming indisposition, which had all the appearance of apoplexy. Having been conducted home, he was put to bed, and enjoyed a sound sleep, which appeared to have arrested the progress of the disease, for he was afterwards able to walk about his room. The apoplectic symptoms, however, returned in a few days, and he fell into a state of stupor. His last words marked the gradual darkening of the ray of life and intellect beneath this mortal disorder. He said, " It grows dark, boys you may go " his mind evidently wandering at that moment to the scene where he had spent the better part of his life. This twi- light soou settled down into the night of death : he expired early in the morn- ing of the 18th December, 1809. The death of the amiable and excellent Dr Adam operated, among his numerous friends and admirers, like a shock of elec- tricity. Men of all ages and denominations were loud in lamenting an event which had bereaved them of a common benefactor. The effect of the general feeling was a resolution to honour him with what is a very rare circumstance in Scotland, a public funeral. The life of Dr Adam proves, had any proof been wanting, the possibility of rising to distinction in this country from any grade of life, and through what- soever intervening difficulties. In 1758 and 1759 he was a student living at the inconceivably humble rate of four guineas a-year ; in ten years thereafter, he had qualified himself for, and attained, a situation which, in Scotland, is an object of ambition to men of considerable literary rank. The principal features of his character were, unshaken independence and integrity, ardour in the cause of public liberty, the utmost purity of manners and singleness of heart, and a most indefatigable power of application to the severest studies. " His external appear- ance was that of a scholar who dressed neatly for his own sake, but who had never incommoded himself with fashion in the cut of his coat, or in the regula- tion of his gait. Upon the street he often appeared in a studious attitude, and in winter always walked with his hands crossed, and thrust into his sleeves. His features were regular and manly, and he was above the middle size. In his well-formed proportions, and in his firm regular pace, there appeared the marks of habitual temperance. He must have been generally attractive in his early days, and, in his old age, his manners and conversation enhanced the value and interest of every qualification. When he addressed his scholars, when he com- mended excellence, or when he was seated at his own fireside with a friend on whom he could rely, it was delightful to be near him ; and no man could leave his company without declaring that he loved Dr Adam." ADAM, ROBERT, an eminent architect, was born at Edinburgh in the year 1728. His father, William Adam, of Mary burgh, in the county of Fife, also distinguished himself as an architect ; Hopetoun House, and the Royal Infir- mary at Edinburgh, are specimens of his abilities. Robert, the second son, inherited his father's taste, and lived in a time more favourable to its develop- ment. He was educated in the university of Edinburgh, where he enjoyed the kind attentions of Robertson, Smith, and Ferguson; all of whom were his father's friends. As he advanced in life, he was on friendly and intimate terms with Archibald Duke of Argyle, Sir Charles Tovvnshend, and the Earl of Mansfield. About the year 1754, with a view to improve his knowledge of architecture, he travelled on the continent, and resided three years in Italy, where he surveyed the magnificent specimens of Roman architecture ; the buildings of the ancients, in his opinion, being the proper school of the architectural student. But while he beheld with much pleasure the remains of the public buildings of the Romans, ROBERT ADAM. 19 he regretted to perceive that hardly a vestige of their private houses or villas was anywhere to be found. In tracing the progress of Roman architecture, he had remarked that it had declined previous to the age of Dioclesian ; but he was also convinced that the liberality and munificence of that emperor had revivedj during his reign, a better taste, and had formed artists who were capable of imi- tating the more elegant styles of the preceding ages. He had seen this remark- ably exemplified in the public baths at Rome, which were erected by Dioclesian. The interest which he felt in this particular branch of Roman remains, and his anxiety to behold a good specimen of the private buildings of this wonderful people, induced him to undertake a voyage to Spalatro in Dalmatia, to visit and examine the palace of Dioclesian, where, after his resignation of the empire, in 305, that emperor spent the last nine years of his life. He sailed from Venice in 1754, accompanied by two experienced draughtsmen, and M. Clerisseau, a French antiquary and artist. On their arrival at Spalatro, they found that the palace had not suffered less from dilapidations by the inhabitants, to procure materials for building, than from the injuries of time; and that, in many places, the very foundations of the ancient structures were covered with modern houses. When they began their labours, the vigilant jealousy of the government was alarmed, and they were soon interrupted ; for suspecting their object was to view and make plans of the fortifications, the governor issued a peremptory order, commanding them to desist. It was only through the influence and mediation of General Graeme, the conimander-in-chief of the Venetian forces (probably a Scotsman), that they were at length permitted to resume their labours; and in five weeks they finished plans and views of the remaining frag- ments, from which they afterwards executed perfect designs of the whole build- ing. Mr Adam soon after returned to England, and speedily rose to professional eminence. In 1762, he was appointed architect to their majesties, and in the year following he published, in one volume large folio, " Ruins of the Palace of the emperor Dioclesian at Spalatro, in Dalmatia." This splendid work con- tains seventy-one plates, besides letter-press descriptions. He had at this time been elected a member of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, and in 1768 he was elected to represent Kinross-shire in Parliament ; which was probably owing to the local influence of his family. A seat in the House of Commons being incompatible with employment under the crown, he now resigned his office as architect to their majesties ; but continued to prosecute his professional career with increasing reputation, being much employed by the English nobility and gentry in constructing new and embellishing ancient mansions. In the year 1773, in conjunction with his brother, James Adam, who also rose to considerable reputation as an architect, he commenced " The Works in Archi- tecture of R. and J. Adam," which before 1776 had reached a fourth number, r,nd was a work of equal splendour with the one above referred to. The four numbers contain, among other productions, Sion House, Caen Wood, Luton Park House, the Gateway of the Admiralty, and the General Register House at Edinburgh ; all of which have been admired for elegant design and correct taste ; though the present age, in its rage for a severe simplicity, might desire the absence of certain minute ornaments, with which the Adams were accustomed to fill up vacant spaces. Before this period, the two brothers had reared in London that splendid monument of their taste, the Adelphi ; which, however, was too extensive a speculation to be profitable. They were obliged, in 1774, to obtain an act of parliament to dispose of the houses by way of lottery. The 20 HENRY ADAM SON. chief Scottish designs of Adam, besides the Register Office, were the new addi- tions to the University of Edinburgh, and the Infirmary of Glasgow. " We have also seen and admired," says a biographer, "elegant designs executed by Mr Adam, which were intended for the South Bridge and South Bridge Street of Edinburgh ; and which, if they had been adopted, would have added much to the decoration of that part of the town. But they were considered unsuit- able to the taste or economy of the times, and were therefore rejected. Strange incongruities," continues the same writer, " appear in some buildings which have been erected from designs by Mr Adam. But of these it must be observed, that they have been altered or mutilated in execution, according to the conve- nience or taste of the owner ; and it is well known that a slight deviation changes the character and mars the effect of the general design. A lady of rank was furnished by Mr Adam with the design of a house ; but on examining the build- ing after it was erected, he was astonished to find it out of all proportion. On inquiring the cause, he was informed that the pediment he had designed was too small to admit a piece of new sculpture which represented the arms of the family, and, by the date which it bore, incontestably proved its antiquity. It was therefore absolutely necessary to enlarge the dimensions of the pediment to receive this ancient badge of family honour, and sacrifice the beauty and proportion of the whole building. We have seen a large public building which was also designed by Mr Adam ; but when it was erected, the length was cur- tailed oi the space of two windows, while the other parts remained according to the original plan. It now appears a heavy unsightly pile, instead of exhibiting that elegance of proportion and correctness of style which the faithful execu- tion of Mr Adam's design would have probably given it. To the last period of his life, Mr Adam displayed the same vigour of genius and refinement of taste ; for in the space of one year immediately preceding his death, he designed eight great public works, besides twenty-five private buildings, so various in style, and beautiful in composition, that they have been allowed by the best judges to be sufficient of themselves to establish his fame as an unrivalled artist." Mr Adam died on the 3d of March, 1792, by the bursting of a blood-vessel, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. It remains only to be said that, while his works commanded the admiration of the public, his natural suavity of manners, joined to his excellent moral character, had made a deep impression upon the circle of his own private friends. His brother James, who has been referred to as associated with him in many of his works, died October 20, 1794. ADAMSON, HENRY, a poet of the seventeenth century, and probably a rela- tive of the subject of the following article, was the sou of James Adamson, who was dean of guild in Perth, anno 1600, when the Gowrie conspiracy took place in that city. The poet was educated for the pulpit, and appears to have made considerable progress in classical studies, as he wrote Latin poetry above medio- crity. He enjoyed the friendship and esteem of a large circle of the eminent men of that age, particularly Drummond of Hawthornden, who induced him, in 1638, to publish a poem entitled, "Mirthful Musings for the death of Mi- Gall ;" being in fact a versified history of his native town, full of quaint alle- gorical allusions suitable to the taste of that age. A new edition of this curious poem, whicli had become exceedingly rare, was published in 1774, with illus- trative notes by Mr James Cant. The ingenious author died in 1C39, the year after the publication of his poem. PATRICK ADAMSON. 21 _A DAMSON, PATRICK, Archbishop of St Andrews. This prelate, whose name occupies so remarkable a place in the history of the Scottish Reformation, was born of humble parents, in the town of Perth, in the year 1543. Such is the date assigned; but we think it maybe safely carried two or three years farther back, as we find his name in the roll of the first General Assembly held by the reformed church of Scotland, in 1560, as one of those persons belonging to St Andrews who were fit for ministering and teaching ; while, only two years after, we find him minister of Ceres, in Fifeshire, with a commission to plant churches from Dee to Etham. Great as were the emergencies of the infant kirk at this time from the want of ministers, it is scarcely to be thought that it would have appointed to such important charges a youth who had not yet attained the age of twenty. Previous to this period he had studied at the university of St Andrews, where it is likely he was distinguished by those talents and literary acquirements that subsequently brought him into such notice, and, after having gone through the usual course, he graduated as Master of Arts. His name at this period was Patrick Consteane, or Constance, or Constantine, for in all these forms it is written indifferently ; but how it afterwards passed into Adamson we have no means of ascertaining. At the close of his career at college, he opened a school in Fife, and soon obtained the notice and patronage of James M'Gill of Rankeillor, one of the judges of the Court of Session, who possessed considerable political influence. He had not long been minis- ter of Ceres, when we find him impatient to quit his charge ; and accord- ingly, in 1564, he applied to the General Assembly for leave "to pass to other countries for a time, to acquire increase of knowledge," but was inhibited to leave his charge without the Assembly's license. That license, however, he seems at length to have obtained, and probably, also, before the meeting of the Assembly in the following year, when they published such stringent decisions against those ministers who abandon their spiritual charges. Patrick Con- stance, or, as we shall henceforth call him, Adamson, now appointed tutor of the son of M'Gill of Rankeillor, passed over with his young charge, who was destined for the study of the civil law, to Paris, at that time the chief school of the distinguished jurisconsults of Europe. Adamson had not been long in Paris when such adventures befel him as might well make him sigh for the lowly obscurity of Ceres. In the course of events that had occurred in Scotland, during his absence, were the marriage of Queen Mary and Henry Darnley, and the birth of their infant, afterwards James VI. ; and Adamson, who at this time was more of a courtier than a politician, and more of a poet than either, immediately composed a triumphant "carmen" on the event, entitled, Serenissimi et nobilissimi Scotice, Angliae, Fran dee, et Hibernice Principis, Henrici Stuarti lllustrissimi Herois, ac Marias Repince amplissinuje Filii, Genethliacum. The very title was a startling one, both to France and England, the great political questions of which countries it at once prejudged, by giving them the Scottish queen for their lawful, indisputable sovereign. Had this poem, which was published a few days after the event, been produced in England, its author would scarcely have escaped an awkward I examination before the Star Chamber ; but as it was, he was within the reach ' of Catherine de M^dicis, to the full as jealous of her authority as Elizabeth herself, and far more merciless in exercising it. Adamson was therefore re- warded for his Latin poetry by a six months' imprisonment, which perhaps would have been succeeded by a worse infliction, had it not been for the media- 22 PATRICK ADAM SON. tion of Mary herself, backed by that of some of her chief nobles. It did not at that time suit the policy of France to break with Scotland, and the poet was set at liberty. Having thus had a sufficient sojourn in Paris, Adamson repaired with his pupil to Bourges, where both entered themselves as students of law, a science which the Scottish ministers of the day frequently added to that of theology. Even here, however, he was not long allowed to remain in safety. The massacre of St. Bartholomew that foul national blot of France, and anomaly of modern history burst out with the suddenness of a tornado across a tranquil sky ; and, amidst the ruin that followed, no Protestant, over the whole extent of France, could be assured of his life for a single hour. Adamson had his full share of the danger, and narrowly escaped its worst, by finding shelter in a lowly hostelry ; the master of which was afterwards flung from the top of his own house, and killed on the pavement below, for having given shelter to heretics. While immured in this dreary confinement, that continued for seven months, and which he fitly termed his sepulchre, Adamson appears to have consoled himself with Latin poetry upon themes suited to his condi- tion ; one attempt of this nature being the tragedy of Herod, and the other a version of the book of Job. We may notice here, that he had not been lost sight of during this protracted residence in France, by his brethren, or the church at home ; and that, in the year previous to the massacre, the General Assembly had once and again desired him to return, and resume his ministry. But to this earnest request he, in the first instance, craved leisure for careful deliberation, and after, sent a full answer, evidently in the negative, as he did not see fit to comply. But the perils in which he was afterwards involved, and the long confinement he endured, had probably brought him to a more submis- sive, or at least a safer mode of thinking; for, as soon as he was able to emerge, one of the first uses which he made of his liberty was to make preparations for returning home, and resuming those ministerial labours which he had good cause to regret he ever had abandoned. Oh the return of Patrick Adamson to Scotland, he seems to have been favour- ably received by his brethren, notwithstanding his previous recusancy. His reception, indeed, could scarcely have been otherwise than cordial, as he had so lately been all but a martyr for Protestantism in the midst of a terrible perse- cution. His return was at a critical period; for the archbishopric of St Andrews was at that time vacant, and, notwithstanding the Presbyterian doc- trine of parity, which had been laid down as a fundamental principle of the Scottish church, the chief prelatic offices were still continued, through the overbearing influence of those nobles who now directed the government of the country. But it was from no love of Episcopacy in the abstract that these magnates continued such charges, obnoxious though they were to the church and the people at large, but that they might derive from them a profitable revenue, as lay proprietors of the livings. In this way the Earl of Morton had acquired a claim to the revenues of the archbishopric of St Andrews, and only needed some ecclesiastic who could wear the title, and discharge its duties, for a small per-centage of the benefice. It was a degrading position for a church- man, and yet there were too many who were willing to occupy it, either from a vain-glorious love of the empty name, or an ambitious hope of converting it into a substantial reality. Among these aspirants for the primacy of Scotland, Patrick Adamson was suspected to be one ; and it was thought that he expected to succeed through the influence of his patron, M'Gill of Rankeillor. These PATRICK ADAMSON. 23 surmises, his subsequent conduct but too well justified. But Morton had already made his election in favour of John Douglas, who was inducted into the office, notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of John Knox. The con- duct of Adamson on this occasion was long after remembered when he would have wished it to be forgot. The week after the induction, and when the greatest concourse of people was expected, he ascended the pulpit and delivered a vehement and sarcastic sermon against the Episcopal office as then exercised in Scotland. " There are three sorts of bishops," he said ; " My lord Bishop, my lord's Bishop, and the Lord's Bishop. My lord Bishop was in the papistry ; my lord's Bishop is now, when my lord gets the benefice, and the bishop serves for 'nothing but to make his title sure; and the Lord's Bishop is the true minister of the gospel." He saw that, for the present at least, he could not be primate of St Andrews, and therefore he turned his attention to the more humble offices of the church. And there, indeed, whatever could satisfy the wishes of a simple presbyter was within his reach ; for he was not only in general esteem among his brethren, but highly and justly valued for his scholarship, in conse- quence of his catechism of Calvin in Latin heroic verse, which he had written in France, and was about to publish in Scotland with the approbation of the General Assembly. He now announced his willingness to resume the duties of the ministry ; but his intimation was coupled with a request that had some- what of a secular and selfish appearance. It was, that a pension which had been granted to him by the late regent out of the teinds of the parsonage of Glasgow, should be secured to him ; and that the procurators of the Assembly should be commissioned to aid him to that effect. His request was granted, and he once more became a minister. The town of Paisley was his sphere of duty, according to the appointment of the Assembly. In addition to this, he was subsequently appointed commissioner of Galloway, an office which resembled that of a bishop as to its duties, but divested of all its pre-eminence and emolu- ment. Some of the best men of the kirk had undertaken this thankless office with alacrity, and discharged its duties with diligence ; but such was not the case with Patrick Adamson ; and when his remissness as a commissioner wa? complained of to the General Assembly, he acknowledged the justice of the accusation, but pleaded in excuse, that no stipend was attached to the office. Of the labours of Adamson while minister of Paisley, no record has been pre- served. His time there, however, was brief, as a new sphere was opened to his ambition. The great subject of anxiety at this period in the church, was the construction of the Book of Policy, otherwise called the Second Book of Disci- pline, and procuring its ratification by the government ; but the chief obstacle in the way was the Earl of Morton, now regent, whose principal aim, besides enriching himself with the ecclesiastical revenues, was to bring the two churches of England and Scotland into as close a conformity as possible, in order to facili- tate the future union of the two kingdoms under the reign of his young master, James VI. Here it is that we find Adamson busy. He became an active negotiator for the Book of Policy, and while he managed to secure the confi- dence < .f the leading men in the church, he ingratiated himself into the favour of the regent ; so that when the latter chose him for his chaplain, the brethren seem to have hoped that the accomplishment of their purpose would be facilitated by having such an advocate at court. But never were ecclesiastics more thoroughly disappointed in their hopes from such a quarter. The archbishopric of St Andrews had again become vacant, and Morton nominated Adamson to the 24: PATRICK ADAMSON. see ; who, on receiving the appointment, began even already to show th;it hu would hold it independently of the authority of the church, by refusing to (submit to the usual trial and examination of the Assembly. In this he persisted, and entered office against the acts and ordinances of the Assembly provided for such occasions. While chaplain to the regent, he had been wont, while preach- ing, and giving his glosses upon texts of Scripture, to say, " The prophet would mean this " a phrase so usual with him on such occasions, that his hearers could not help noticing it. At length, when he became primate of Scotland, Captain Montgomery, one of the regent's officers, exclaimed, with dry humour, " I never knew what the prophet meant till now !" As Adamson's entering into the archbishopric was such an act of contravention to the authority of the church, the Assembly, at one of its meetings in 1577, resolved to institute proceedings against the offender. But even this formidable danger he was able to avert for the time with his wonted craft. He professed the utmost humility, and offered to lay down his office at the feet of the Assembly, and be ordered at their pleasure, but represented how desirable it would be to postpone all such proceedings until the Book of Policy had been finished, and ratified by the regent. The matter was thus reduced to a mere question of time, and his suggestion prevailed. The great subject now at issue was the Book of Ecclesiastical Policy, the Magna Charta of the Church of Scotland, upon the passing of which its rights and liberties as a national church were at stake. It was, as might have been expected, completely Presbyterian in its discipline, and subversive of that epis- copal rule which the court was labouring to establish. Among these enact- ments, it was decreed, that no bishop should be designated by his title, but his own name, as a brother, seeing he belonged to a church that has but one Lord, even Christ that no bishops should thenceforth be appointed in it ; and that no minister should accept the office on pain of deprivation. Against such con- clusions it is not wonderful that Adamson demurred. But as himself and the bishop of Aberdeen constituted the entire minority in the Assembly, his oppo- sition went' no farther than to procrastinate any final conclusion. But the Policy was at length concluded, and ready to be presented to the government, and for this, Adamson had reserved his master stroke. The book was to be subscribed by every member individually, but this form the archbishop opposed. " Nay," he said, " we have an honest man, our clerk, to subscribe for all, and it would derogate from his faithfulness and estimation if we should all severally subscribe." The difference appeared so trivial, that the brethren assented to the proposal, although some of them seem to have entertained a lurking sus- picion that all was not right ; so that Mr Andrew Hay, minister of Renfrew, could not help exclaiming, " Well, if any man comes against this, or denies it hereafter, he is not honest." He soon showed at whom his suspicions pointed, by stepping up to Adamsou, and saying to him in the presence of three or four by-standers, "There is my hand, Mr Patrick ; if you come against this here- after, consenting now so thoroughly to it, I will call you a knave, were it never bo publicly." The other accepted the challenge, and thus the matter ended lor the present. The Book of Policy was to be presented to the Lords of Articles for ratification on the part of the government ; and strangely enough, Adamsou was commissioned to present it. Morton and the lords asked him if he had given his assent to these enactments ; to which he answered that he had not, and that he had refused to subscribe to them. Here was a loop-hole of PATRICK ADAMSON. 25 escape for the council : the Archbishop of St. Andrews had withheld his assent, and they could do no less than follow the example. The Book was rejected, and the ministers were left to divine the cause of the refusal. But Andrew Ilay, on inquiring of several members of council, who told him the particulars, and laid the whole blame of the refusal on Adamson, soon saw that he had a pledge to redeem ; and on the archbishop passing by at that instant, he griped him by the hand, looked him angrily in the face, and exclaimed, in presence of the others, " O knave, knave, I will crown thee the knave of all knaves !" It is enough to add here, that the Book of Policy, after having been delayed three years longer, was in 1581 thoroughly ratified and ordained in every point, and ordered to be registered in the books of the Assembly. As for Adamson, we find him employed during this interval in preaching in St Andrews, lecturing in the college, and attending the meetings of the General Assembly, but with no greater authority than that of the ordinary brethren. But symptoms even already had occurred to show, that the court favour upon which he was willing to build, was but a sandy foundation, for his powerful patron, the earl of Mor- ton, had been brought to the block. He forthwith prepared himself, therefore, to recognize the authority of the kirk in the doctrine of bishops, to which he had hitherto been opposed, and even gave his subscription to the articles of the Book of Policy, which he had hitherto withheld. This was in St Andrews, before the celebrated Andrew Melville, and a party of his friends, who were assembled with him. But all this was insufficient : he must also secure the countenance of the party in power, whatever for the time it might be ; and for this purpose he passed over to Edinburgh, and took his seat in the Convention of Estates. Here, however, his reception was so little to his liking, that he found he must side wholly with the kirk. He therefore addressed himself to the ministers of Edinburgh, with professions which his subsequent conduct showed to be downright hypocrisy. He told them that he had come over to the court in the spirit of Balaam, on purpose to curse the kirk, and do evil ; but that God had so wrought with him, that his heart was wholly changed, so that he had advocated and voted in the church's behalf and that henceforth he would show further and further fruits of his conversion and good meaning. This self-abasing comparison of himself to Balaam must have staggered the unfavourable suspicions of the most sceptical : at all events, it did so with the apostolic John Durie, who rejoiced over the primate's conversion, and wrote a flattering account of it to James Melville. The latter, in consequence, visited Adamson upon his return, and told him the tidings he had received, for which he heartily thanked God, and offered the archbishop the right hand of Christian fellowship. The other, still continuing his penitent grimace, described the change that had passed upon him at great length, which he attributed to the working of the Spirit within him. Perhaps he overacted his part, for Melville only observed in reply, " Well, that Spirit is an upright, holy, and constant Spirit, and will more and more manifest itself in effects ; but it is a fearful thing to lie against him 1" It was indeed full time for the Archbishop of St Andrews not only to recover his lost credit with the kirk, but the community at large. He was generally accused of the vices of intemperance and gluttony; he was noted as an unfaith- ful paymaster, so that he stood upon the score of most of the shopkeepers in the town ; and what was still worse, he was accused of consorting with witches, and availing himself of their unlawful power ! We of the nineteenth century 2G PATRICK ADAMSON. can laugh at such a charge, and imagine it sufficient not only to disprove itself, but weaken all the other charges brought against him. But in the sixteenth century it was no such laughing matter; for there were not only silly women in abundance to proclaim themselves witches, but wise men to believe them. Even the pulpits of England as well as Scotland resounded with sermons against witchcraft; and a learned prelate, while preaching before Elizabeth, assured her Majesty, that the many people who were dyinjr daily, in spite of all the aid of leechcraft, were thus brought to their end by spells and incantations. While this was the prevalent belief, a person having recourse to such agency was wilfully and deliberately seeking help from the devil, and seeking it where he thought it could best be found. Now, Adamson, among his other offences, had fallen into this most odious and criminal predicament. He was afflicted with a painful disease, which he called a " foedity ;" and being unable to obtain relief from the regular practitioners, he had recourse to the witches of Fife, and among others, to a notable woman, who pretended to have learned the art of healing from a physician who had appeared to her after he was dead and buried ! This wretched creature, on being apprehended and convicted of sorcery, or what she meant to be such, was sentenced to suffer death, as she would have been in any other country of Europe, and was given in charge to the Archbishop for execution. But the woman made her escape, and this, it was supposed she did, through Adamson 's connivance. After this statement, it needs scarcely be won- dered at, that foremost in the accusations both from the pulpit and in church courts, the crime of seeking aid from Satan should have been specially urged against him. The man who will presumptuously attempt "to call spirits from the vasty deep," incurs the guilt of sorcery whether they come or not. While such was the evil plight to which the archbishop was reduced, and ont of which he was trying to struggle as he best could, the condition of public affairs was scarcely more promising for his interests. In the Assembly held in April, 1.582, he had seen Robert Montgomery, Archbishop of Glasgow, who was his constant ally in every Episcopal movement, arraigned at their bar, reduced to the most humbling confessions, and dismissed with the fear of depo- sition hanging over him. In the same year, the Raid of Ruthven had occurred, by which the royal power was coerced, and presbytery established in greater authority than ever. Dismayed by these ominous symptoms, Adamson with- drew from public notice to his castle of St Andrews, where he kept himself " like a tod in his hole,'' giving out that his painful " focdity " was the cause of his retirement. But at length the sky began to brighten, and the primate to venture forth after a whole year of concealment. The king emancipated him- self from his nobles of the Raid, and came to St Andrews, upon which the archbishop, flinging off his sickness likeaworn-out cloak, resumed his abandoned pulpit with royalty for an auditor, and preached such sermons as were well > The preacher was no other than the learned Bishop Jewel. " Witches and sorcerers within these last few years," he said, "are marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. These eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness. Your Grace's subjects pine away even unto the death : their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. Wherefore your poor subjects' most humble petition to your Highness is, that the laws touching such malefactors may be put m due execution. For the shoal of them is great, their doing horrible, their malice into- lerable, their examples most miserable: and I pray God they never practise further than upon the nbject." PATRICK ADAMSON. 27 fitted to ingratiate himself into the favour of the young sovereign. They were furious declamations against the lords of the Raid, against the ministers of the kirk by whom they had been countenanced, and against all their proceedings by which the headlong will of James had been reduced within wholesome limits; and these, too, were delivered in such fashion, as, we are informed by James Melvill, " that he who often professed from the pulpit before that he had not the spirit of application, got the gift of application by inspiration of such a spirit as never spoke in the scriptures of God." Among the other effects of the Raid of Ruthven, was the banishment of the king's unworthy favourites, the Earl of Arran, and the Duke of Lennox, the former from the royal presence, and the latter from the country ; and Lennox took his exile so much to heart, that he died soon after he had arrived in France, while James continued to bewail his loss. Here then was a favourable theme for the archbishop. The chief offence alleged against Lennox was, that though outwardly a Protestant, he had not only lived, but even died a Papist ; and from this stigma it was Adamson's main effort to clear the memory of the departed. He therefore boldly asserted, in his sermon, that Lennox had died a good Protestant, and in proof of this he exhibited in the pulpit a scroll, which he called the Duke's testament. It happened unluckily for the preacher, however, that an honest merchant woman, who sat near the pulpit, looked narrowly at this important document, and saw with astonishment that it was an account of her own, which she had sent to the archbishop for a debt of some four or five years' standing, but which, like other reckonings of the kind, he had left unpaid ! Adamson s loyalty was soon rewarded, and in a way that best accorded with his wishes. He was to be employed as ambassador or envoy from the king to the court of London. What was the ostensible object of his mission does not appear ; but its real purport was, the suppression of Presbyterianism.in Scot- land, and the establishment of such a form of Episcopacy in its stead, as might make the union of the two countries more complete, when James should become king of both. But in such an office the messenger behoved to go wisely and warily to work, as Elizabeth was apt to take fire at every movement that pointed to a succession in her throne. Another serious difficulty interposed in the very threshold of the archbishop's departure. He had already been charged before the presbytery of St Andrews, as corrupt both in life and doctrine : the trial was removed to the synod, and was finally remitted to the General Assembly, at whose bar he must justify himself, or be deposed for non-appearance ; and he thus felt himself between the horns of a dilemma in which his compearance or absence might be equally fatal. If, however, he could only get the trial delayed until he had accomplished his mission, he might then brave it, or quash it with impunity. He therefore called sickness to his aid, and pretended that he was going to the wells of Spa, in Germany, for the recovery of his health ; and this was nothing more than reasonable, even though he should take London by the way. Forth therefore he went, unhindered and unsuspected ; and, if there is any truth in " The Legend of the Lymmar's Life," a satirical poem, written by Robert Semple, the archbishop's conduct during this embassy was anything but creditable to his employers. His chief aim, indeed, seems to have been to replenish his extenuated purse ; and, provided this was accomplished, he was by no means scrupulous about the means. Even horses, books, and gowns came into his permanent possession under the name of loans. His approach to the palace for his first, and, as it turned out, his last audience, was equally 28 PATRICK ADAMSON. nnseemly, for he advanced to the hallowed walls of the virgin Queen with n3 little lastidiousness, as if he had been about to enter the dingy habitation of some Scottish baron in one of the closes of the Canongate, so that a porter, who espied him from the gate, rushed out and rebuked his indecorum with iv cudgel. But, amidst all his Scapin-like tricks in the English metropolis, from which he seems to have derived for the time a comfortable revenue, Adamson was not unmindful of the real object of his journey, which he pursued with u diligence worthy of a better cause. He endeavoured to enlist the prejudices of the Queen against the ministers of Scotland, and such of the nobility as favoured them ; he consulted with the bishops upon the best means of conforming the Scottish to the English church ; and, aware of the purpose of his own court to banish or silence the best of the clergy, he wished them to send learned and able ministers to supply the pulpits of those who were to be displaced. But, not content with this, he endeavoured to bring the kirk of Scotland into dis- credit with the foreign Reformed churches of France, Geneva, and Zurich, by sending to them a list of garbled or distorted passages, as propositions extracted from the Scottish confession, and craving their opinion as to their soundness. It was a crafty device, and might have been attended with much mischief, had it not been that an antidote to the bane was at this timo in England, in the person of Mr Andrew Melville, a more accomplished scholar, as well as a more able and eloquent writer, than Adamson himself. He drew up a true statement of the subjects propounded, and sent them to the foreign churches, by which the archbishop's design was speedily frustrated. But the work of mere eccle- siastical diplomacy does not seem to have been sufficient for the restless and scheming mind of Adamson, so that he was suspected of intriguing with the French and Spanish ambassadors, and connecting himself with the plot of Throckmorton, the object of which was the liberation of Mary, and the restora- tion of Popery. It was a strange period of plots and conspiracies, where Pro- testant, Papist, and Puritan, priest and layman, foreigner and Englishman, were often mingled together as in a seething and bubbling cauldron, lor the concoction of a charm by which a cure for every public evil was to be effected. It was immediately on the detection of this Throckmorton conspiracy, and the appre- hension of its author, that the archbishop secretly withdrew from England and returned home, after having been employed fully six months in these, and other euch devices, in London. While Adamson had thus been occupied in England, in the establishment of Episcopacy, the government at home had not been idle ; and the worthless Earl of Arran, who, since the suppression of the Raid of Ruthven, had returned to court, and acquired a greater ascendancy over the weak mind of James than ever, proceeded to put his plan in execution of silencing, imprisoning, and banishing the best and most distinguished of the Scottish clergy. It was thus that the flocks were to be brought to helplessness, and a new order of shepherds introduced. The list of the persecuted was a large one ; but among the most illustrious of these were some of the most distinguished lights of the Scottish Re/ormation, such as Andrew Melville, John Davidson, Walter Balcanquhal, and James Lawson. Of these we can only particularize the last, as his closing scene was but too intimately connected with the history of Patrick Adamson. Lawson had been the friend and fellow-labourer of Knox, whom he succeeded u} minister of Edinburgh ; and in this important charge, while he was closely connected with all the principal ecclesiastical movements of the period, he was PATRICK ADAMSON. 29 distinguished by his gentleness, self-denial, and piety. But these were the very Qualities that now marked him out as a victim ; and the imperious Arran did not hesitate to threaten that, though his head were as big as a hay-stack, he would make it fly from his shoulders. Lawson knew that his life was aimed :it, and, like several of his brethren thus circumstanced, he fled to England, and took up his residence at London, in one of the lanes leading from Cheapside. But the uncongenial climate, and, above all, the detection of many of his flock during his absence, so heavily afflicted him, that he fell into a disease, of which he died in little more than a month. Upon his death-bed, the English who visited him were edified with his pious remarks, which they carefully treasured up for their families and acquaintances ; and his last prayers were for mercy to those who would neither enter the kingdom of God themselves, nor suffer others to enter therein. And will it be believed that Patrick Adamson, the man for whom in especial he had so prayed, conceived the idea of perverting such a death-bed to his own political purposes? But so it was. He sat down with the pen of a ready writer, and composed an elaborate testament in Lawson's I name, in which the dying man was made to abjure all his Presbyterian princt- 1 pies, to grieve over them as deadly sins, to recommend the government of the church by bishops, and enjoin implicit obedience to the king's authority. It was indeed a bold exploit in literary forgery ; but, at this period and afterwards, when the pen outran the activity of the press, and communities were so separ- ated, it was easy to make a fraud of this kind, where the locality was transferred to London, to pass current in the streets of Edinburgh. There is no doubt that thus the archbishop had calculated; but, like many very cunning people, he, in this instance, betrayed himself by his over-scrupulous dexterity, and wove the web so finely, that in many places it was quite transparent. Thus, not content with making Lawson recant all the principles of his well-spent life with a hurry that was inconceivable, and laud Episcopal rule with an unction and earnestness which the Archbishop of Canterbury himself could not have surpassad, he also made him, in exhorting his old co-presbyters, to vent a malignity of sentiment, and drolling bitterness of satire, such as, whether living or dying, Lawson could not and would not have used. But it fortunately hap- pened that proof still stronger than inferential evidence was at hand, to convict this impudent forgery; for Lawson himself had written his last testament, which was witnessed with the honoured names of Andrew Melville, James Carmichael, John Davidson, and Walter Balcanquhal. After his return from England, Adamson did not lie idle ; he zealously joined the king and Arran in their persecution of the best adherents of the kirk, under which, not only the principal ministers, but also the chief of the nobility, were fugitives in England. His pen also was soon in requisition for a more dignified work, at least, than that of blackening the memory of a departed brother; it was to advocate, defend, and justify certain obnoxious measures of James and his favourite, that had passed through the parliament in 1584, and were generally unpopular, both on account of their anti-presbyterian spirit in religion, and their despotic tendencies in civil rule. This task Adamson accom- plished, and with such plausibility and ingenuity, that his apology was not only in high favour with the king, but widely popular in England, so that it was inserted in the appendix of Holinshed's History as a true picture of the religious state of Scotland. But this was not his only reward. Although he was still a suspended presbyter, with his trial by the General Assembly hanging SO PATRICK ADAilSOX. over him, and accounted a very Julian the Apostate by his former brethren, yet he was now to be confirmed in his primacy, with all the high rights and immunities that could be comprised within the office. This was announced by a royal letter, under the great seal, and, as such, was indignantly termed by the ministers the King's Bull, "giving and granting to his well-beloved clerk and orator, Patrick, archbishop of St Andrews, power, authority, and jurisdiction to exercise the same archbishopric by himself, his commissioners, and deputies, in all matters ecclesiastical, within the diocese of St Andrews, and sheiiffdoms which have been heretofore annexed thereto." In this way he would be able to sit as presiding moderator in that Assembly where he should have stood as a culprit, and silence the charges which he could not have answered. But this, his culminating point, was also that of his downfall. The banished lords, who had withdrawn themselves to England, now took counsel upon the oppressed state of their country, and resolved to redress it after the old Scottish fashion. They therefore approached the border, where they could communicate with their allies, and appoint musters of their retainers ; and at length, all being in readiness, Angus, Mar, Glammis, and the Hamiltons entered Scotland, and rapidly marched to Stirling, at the head of eight thousand armed men, to reason with their misguided sovereign. He soon found himself, like many of his ancestors, the pupil of Force and Necessity, and was compelled to yield to their stern remonstrances ; while Arran was again, and for the last time, banished into that obscurity from which he should never have been summoned. The return of the exiled lords, and the banishment of Arran from court, produced a breathing interval to the kirk ; and the ministers who had been dispersed, warded, or silenced, were enabled to resume their charges unques- tioned. It was now time, therefore, to redress the evils that had been inflicted upon the church, and these too by members of its own body, during the last two years of trial, if its polity and discipline were to be something more than an empty name. It was a stern duty, as Adamson was soon to feel. He had laboured for the eversion of the kirk, and the persecution of its ministers, under an unconstitutional authority against which he had protested and subscribed ; and for all this he must answer before the court to which the assize of such delinquencies pertained. The synod of St Andrews, which had been closed during the persecution, was to be re-opened, and their first work was to be the trial of their own archbishop, whom their laws recognized as a simple presbyter, and nothing more. This solemn meeting was therefore convoked in April, 1586, to which a great concourse assembled ; and thither also came the archbishop, " with a great pontificality and big countenance," for he boasted that he was in his own city, and possessed of the king's favour, and therefore needed to fear uo one. He also placed himself close by the preacher, who was Mr James Melville, as if determined to outbrave the whole assembly. The discourse was a vindication of the polity of the church, and a rehearsal of the wrongs it had suffered ; and then, "coming in particular," says Melville himself, " to our own kirk of Scotland, I turned to the bishop, sitting at my elbow, and directing my speech to him personally, I recounted to him, shortly, his life, actions, and pro- ceedings against the kirk, taking the assembly there to witness, and his own con- fecience before God, if he was not an evident proof and example of that doctrine ; whom, being a minister of the kirk, the Dragon had so stung with the poison and venom of avarice and ambition, that, swelling exorbitantly out of measure, tlireateaed the wreck and destruction of the whole body, unless he were time- PATRICK ADAMSON. 31 ouSiy and with courage cut off." To this formidable appeal, the archbishop endeavoured to answer, hut it was only with frivolous objections, and threats of the king's displeasure, while his courage was so utterly gone that he could scarcely sit, far less stand on his feet. But the business commenced, the pro- cess was entered into, and Adamson left the meeting. He was invited to return, but he sent for answer that the synod was no judge to him, but he to it. He not only persisted in refusing to appear, hut sent such answers to the charges against him as only aggravated the offence. Nothing remained but to inflict upon htm the final sentence of the church, which was done accordingly. After enumerating his offences, it thus concluded : " Therefore, and for divers other notorious slanders whereof he was to be accused, and refused to underly any lawful trial, the assembly, in the fear of God, and in the name of Christ Jesus, moved by zeal to the glory of God, and purging of His kirk, ordains the said sentence of excommunication instantly to be put into execution in the face of the assembly ; and, by the mouth of Mr Andrew Hunter, minister at Carnobie, at command and appointment of the assembly, declares him to be one of those whom Christ commandeth to be holden by all and every one of the faithful as an ethnic or publican." The doom so long suspended hid thus fallen at last ; but still the primate would not yield. He rallied himself for a desperate counter-movement, and penned, by his own sole authority, a sentence of excommunication against the two Melvilles, and some of his principal accusers in the synod, which he sent by n boy, accompanied by two of his jackmen ; but when this strange and most informal missive was read in the church, the audience were as little moved by it, as if he had excommunicated the stones of the building. He also sent a complaint against these proceedings to the king, with an appeal from the authority of the synod to his majesty, the estates, and the privy council. On the arrival of Sabbath, he prepared for a decisive effort, by preaching in the church in spite of the sentence. But just when he was about to ascend the pulpit, a mischievous rumour reached his ear, thit several gentlemen and citizens had assembled in the New College, to take him out of the pulpit, and hang him; and terrified with the tidings, he not only called his friends and jackmen to the rescue, but fled from the church, and took refuge in the steeple. And yet, the whole cause of the stir was nothing more than the assembling of a few gentlemen and citizens in the New College, to attend the preaching of Andrew Melville, instead of that of an excommunicated man! The archbishop's friends followed him to the steeple, to assure him of his safety ; but so desperate was his fear, that they could scarcely drag him out by force. While he was half-led, half-carried down the High Street, and through the north gate towards his castle, an unlucky stray hare, terrified at the coming din, suddenly started up, and fled before them. Even this incident could impart some gravity to the scene. It was a popular belief at that time in Scotland that a witch, when pursued, usually assumed the form of a hare, more effectually to ensure her escape ; and the appearance of the poor animal at such a time and place, made the people declare that it was no other than the prelate's witch, abandoning her master, to make good her own safety. We have already stated that Adamson appealed against the sentence of excommunication, to the authority of the king. In this singular appeal, he declaimed with great learning and marvellous plausibility about the right of royalty to interpose against ecclesiastical, as well as civil tyranny ; and as he had 32 PATRICK ADAMSON. already made out, as he thought, his own case to be one of undue ecclesiastical oppression on the part of his enemies, the conclusion was plain, that the kin-jr could lawfully release him from the spiritual sentence. He wound up his reasoning with the following supposition, to which, he well knew, James would not be insensible : "Beseeching your majesty to consider and weigh with your Highness' self, nobility, and council, how dangerous a thing it is to put such a sword in such men's hands, or to suffer them to usurp further than their duty ; whereby it may come to pass, that as rashly and unorderly they have pretendedly excommunicated the first man of your majesty's parliament (albeit unworthy), so there rests nothing of their next attempt to do the same to your majesty's self." The king's pride was roused at such a thought, as well as his kingcraft for the restoration of Episcopacy, now at a stand through the jeopardy of his archbishop ; and therefore he arrogantly required the ministers to rescind their sentence, threatening them with the deprivation of their rights and stipends in the event of a refusal. The General Assembly met in May the same year, when these conditions were proposed, and the members were in sore strait how to act in such a dilemma; for most of the restored lords, after being replaced in their possessions, had left the church to shift for itself. At length, a medium course was adopted by the Assembly, and that, too, only by a small majority. It was, that the archbishop " should be holden and repute in the same case and con- dition that he was in before the holding of the Synod of St Andrews, without prejudice, decerning, or judging anything of the proceedings, process, or sentence of the said synod." It was a strange decision, by which Adamson was allowed to teach, preach, and exercise his clerical functions, excommunicated though he still was ; while the pulpits, by royal decree, were not only to be patent to his entrance, but the students of St Andrews were commanded to attend his lectures in the Old College as heretofore. This violence, as might be expected, produced counter-violence, so that libels were thrown not only into the arch- bishop's chamber, but the pulpits in which he officiated, threatening him with death for his intrusion. And as if all this had not been enough, he added to his further disqualifications, byinability to payhis debts, in consequence of which he was, according to the practice of the Scottish law, denounced a rebel, and put to the horn. This case was brought before the Assembly of June, 1587, because many people had demurred to attend his ministrations, while he laboured under such degrading disabilities. The Assembly, however, decided that theso were of a civil, rather than an ecclesiastical character, and referred them to the kin? for adjustment. In the very same year and month, while Adamson was in this miserable plight an excommunicated minister and an outlawed prelate the first man in the parliament, and yet a denounced rebel because he could not pay his debts a gleam of royal sunshine fell upon him, which was destined to be the last. The celebrated Du Bartes visited Scotland ; and James, delighted with the arrival of so distinguished a scholar and poet, received him with princely dis- tinction, and entertained him as his guest. While they were in Fife, the king was desirous that Du Bartes should see the two most accomplished scholars in Scotland and these were incontestibly to be found at St Andrews, in Andrew Melville and Patrick Adamson. Thither accordingly the royal cortege repaired ; and the first notice which Melville had of the visit was from the king himself, who bluntly told him that he had come with the illustrious foreigner, to have n lesson from him in his class-room. Startled by such a brief warning, Melville WD HID AGO .FROM A PAIHTING BY HIMSELF IK THE POSSESSION OF M?FORBK. PATRICK ADAMSON. 33 would have excused himself, outhe plea that he had already delivered his ordi- nary lecture in the forenoon. " That is all one," said the king ; " I must have a lesson, and be you here within an hour for that effect." In less than an hour, the professor was in readiness ; the distinguished visitors and the students were assembled; and Melville commenced such a lecture, as made the king wish him- self once more among the deer in Falkland. It was an eloquent extemporane- ous ovation, in which he vindicated Christ's right of sovereignty over his own chinch, and refuted and exposed the acts of parliament that had been lately enacted subversive of the kirk's authority. James went home in no very pleasant mood, and remained in a fume the whole evening. On the next morn- ing it was Adamson's turn, who was not likely to trespass in the same fashion. During the interval, he had prepared a " tightened-up abridgment" of his previous year's lectures, in which he attempted to vindicate the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, and justify the steps that had been taken for that pur- pose. Andrew Melville, who attended as an auditor, took notes of the arch- bishop's arguments; and without further study, caused the college bell to be rung after a short interval, to announce a new lecture. The king, who had not yet digested the lesson of yesterday, sent a warning to Melville to be moderate, otherwise he would discharge him ; to which the other replied, that his majesty's ear had already been abused by Adamson's errors and untruths, which he could not allow to pass unquestioned, unless his breath were stopped by death itself but that still, he should be careful to behave himself most moderately and reverendly to his majesty in all respects. The king was satisfied with this assurance, and repaired to the class-room, where Adamson was also in attend- ance ; and he craved and obtained the royal permission to reply, should any thing be alleged against his doctrine. The two strong champions were now standing front to front in the lists and never had king of Scotland so delighted in the hurtling together of man and horse, and the shivering of spears, as did James in the prospect of an intellectual tournament, where dexterous syllo- gisms and home-thrust arguments were the only blows in circulation. But here, Melville changed his tactics, in a way that would have puzzled the most experienced master of fence. He had no longer a controversy with Epis- copacy, but with Popery, the great common enemy of Protestantism at large ; and thus secure of the sympathy of his audience, he extracted from the works of the Popish authors the strongest arguments they had adduced in defence of their system, for the purpose of refuting them. But these arguments were the very same which Adamson had used in the forenoon, in favour of the spiritual government of kings and bishops ! There, however, they stood among the ranks of the uncircumcised ; and as such, they were attacked with an amount of scripture and learning, and a force and fervour of eloquence, as completely swept them off the field. It was now the archbishop's turn to bestir himself, but he was dumb dumb as the bench he sat upon. At last, the king advanced to the rescue ; and after making several logical distiuguos, upon which he harangued for some time, he ended by commanding the students to reverence and obey his archbishop. When James departed, Du Bartes stayed behind a whole hour, conversing with Andrew Melville, after which, he mounted his horse, and rejoined his majesty. The king wished to know the opinion of the foreigner upon the two men they had heard ; to which Du Bartes replied, That they were both learned men, but that the prelate's lectures were conned and prepared, whij.e Melville had a great and ready store of all kinds of learning i. E PATRICK ADAMSON. within him ; and that his spirit and courage were far above the other. In this correct estimate James completely agreed. From this period, the life of Adamson was but a brief and mournful record. After his late discomfiture, he became weary of teaching in the college, and seems to have remitted it in a great measure to his successful rival. The minis- trations of the pulpit could not console him, as the audiences either avoided him as an excommunicated man, or tarried and listened as to the voice of an intruder. Fresh complaints were made against him in the church courts, of having col- lated unworthy persons to benefices within his diocese. And, to crown all, he finally lost the favour and protection of the king, whom he had served only too well but who was now weary of an archbishop buried under debt and disgrace, and whose season of working seemed well nigh over. Broken in health as well as in spirit, it might have been thought that James would at least have suffered such a faithful servant to depart in peace ; but as if his own ungrateful hand, and no other, ought to deal the final blow, he alienated from him whatever of the revenues of his diocese he was still permitted to enjoy, and bestowed them upon the young Duke of Lennox, the son of his early favourite. In 151)1, Adamson was dying a heart-broken man, and unable to procure for himself and his family even the common necessaries of life. But besides hollow friends, lie had generous enemies, and these last came forward in the hour of his extremity. Such especially were the two Melvilles, whom he had persecuted in the season of his ascendancy, but who now supported him for several months, at their own expense. At last, he was reduced to such miserable shifts, that he entreated a charitable collection to be made for him among the brethren in the town of St Andrews ; and as an inducement, he offered to repair to the pulpit, and there make open confession of his offences. This, indeed, his sickness prevented him from accomplishing ; but he rendered an equivalent, in a distinct " Recanta- tion," which he subscribed, and sent to the synod of St Andrews. Besides thus showing how little he had cared for Episcopacy, and how much he had used it for his own aggrandizement, he evinced the force of his early and long-concealed convictions in favour of Presbyterianism, by the remorse which he now felt at the thought of his excommunication, and his earnestness to be absolved from the sentence ; and to this effect he sent a supplication to the presbytery of St Andrews. They deputed two of the brethren, one of whom was James Mel- ville, to examine him, and, if they judged fit, to release him. As soon as the dying man saw Melville, he rose up in bed, plucked the night-cap from his head, and exclaimed, " Forgive, forgive me, for God's sake, good Mr James, for I have offended and done wrong to you many ways ! " Melville spoke to him of his sin against Christ and his church, exhorted him to repentance, with the assurance of mercy from God if he repented, and forgave him with all his heart. His excommunication was then spoken of, and he was asked if he acknowledged its lawfulness. To this, his emphatic reply, which he repeated again and again, was, " Loose me, for Christ's sake !" His state and petition were fully reported to the presbytery, and he was forthwith absolved. Even yet, as appears from his " Recantation," he had hoped to struggle through this his last illness ; and he professed in it his earnest desire and purpose to commence a better life, and repair the evils he had inflicted upon religion and the church. But his new- born sincerity was not to be thus tried, and he died in the lowest depths of hia humiliation and repentance. His character is thus strongly and briefly summed up by James Melville, who knew him well, and witnessed his career from it* SAINT AIDAN. height to its mournful termination : " This man had many great gifts, but espe- cially excelled in the tongue and pen ; and yet, for abusing of the same against Christ, all use of both the one and the other was taken from him, when he was in greatest misery, and had most need of them. In the latter end of his life, his nearest friends were no comfort to him, and his supposed greatest enemies, to whom indeed he offered greatest occasion of enmity, were his only friends, and recompenced good for evil, especially my uncle Andrew, but found small tokens of any spiritual comfort in him, which chiefly he would have wished to have seen at his end. Thus God delivered his kirk of a most dangerous enemy, who, if he had been endowed with a common civil piece of honesty in his dealing and conversation, he had more means to have wrought mischief in a kirk or coun- try, than any I have known or heard of in our island." As will be surmised from the foregoing account, Patrick Adamson was both an able and a voluminous writer ; but most of his productions were merely written for the day, and have passed away with the occasions in which they originated. Some of them he never purposed to acknowledge, while others remained unpublished in manuscript. Most of these he confessed and regretted in his " Recantation," declaring, that if it should please God to restore his health, he would change his style, " as Cajetanus did at the Council of Trent." His principal writings were collected and published, in one quarto volume, by Thomas Volusenus (Wilson) in 1619 ; but notwithstanding their undoubted excellence, it may be questioned if they are now at all known beyond the library of the antiquary. It appears, that on becoming minister of Paisley, Adamson married the daughter of a lawyer, who survived him, and by whom he had a family ; but all record of them has passed away, so that he may be said to have been the last, as he was the first of his race. The precise date of his death has not been mentioned ; but it was in the latter part of the year 1591. Such was the career and end of the great antagonist and rival of Andrew Melville. AIDAN, SAINT, Bishop of Lindisfarne in the seventh century, was originally a monk in the island of lona, and afterwards became a missionary in England. To understand aright the history and labours of this self-devoted Christian missionary, it is necessary to glance at the condition of England, and especially of Northumbria, at the commencement of his ministry. England had been but lately converted to Christianity, through the labours of Augustin and forty monks, who had been sent to Britain, for that purpose, by Pope Gregory the Great. The conversion of the seven kingdoms of the heptarchy, into which England was divided by the Saxon conquerors, had been effected with unex- ampled rapidity, but through the simplest agency. The monks, in the first instance, addressed themselves to the sovereign of the state ; and when he renounced his heathen errors, and submitted to baptism, his people implicitly followed the example. But such sudden and wholesale conversions were extremely precarious ; and it sometimes happened that, when the king apos- tatized or died, the people returned to their former worship of Thor and Odin as promptly as they had forsaken it. Such was especially the case in North* umbria, the largest kingdom of the heptarchy, and the scene of Aidan's labours. Edwin, the best and most illustrious sovereign of his day, after a life of strange peril and adventure, had won his hereditary Northumbrian crown, and been converted to Christianity by the Italian missionary Paulinus ; and, on becoming a Christian, the happiest change was soon perceptible among his hitherto un- tamable subjects. They received their sovereign's creed without murmur or SAINT AIPVX. debate; "and in this time," says the old chronicler Fahyan, "was so great pence in the kingdom of Edwin, that a woman might have gone from one town to another without grief or noyaunce; and, for the refreshing of way-goers, this Edwin ordained, at clear wells, cups, or dishes of hrass or iron, to be fas- tened to posts standing by the said wells' sides ; and no man was so hardy as to take away those cups, he kept so good justice." In short, he seems to have been the Alfred of an earlier and ruder period. But, in the height of his power and usefulness, the terrible Penda, king of Mercia, and great champion of the ancient paganism, came against him in arms, and Edwin was defeated and slain in a great battle, fought at Hatfield or Heathfield, near the river Trent. The consequence was, that the Northumbrian's relapsed into their former barbarism so rapidly, that every trace of Christianity would soon have been effaced from among them, had it not been that Oswald, the nephew of Edwin, came forward to vindicate the liberties of his falling country. This brave young prince, who headed the Christian cause against the Pagan, advanced to give battle to Cad- wallader, king of North Wales, in whom his people had found the most relent- less of their enemies. The Christian army which Oswald headed was very small, while that of Cadwallader was numerous, and its king was an able leader and successful conqueror. Aware of the disparity, and conscious of their own weakness, Oswald and his soldiers knelt in prayer, and humbly committed themselves to the God of the Christians, after which they assailed the enemy with full confidence, near Hexham. The Welsh were completely routed, their king was slain, and the victorious prince was received as king by the two united states of Deira and Bernicia. The piety of Oswald attributed this signal success to the aid of the true God, whom he had invoked ; and the first movement of his reign was to arrest the growing heathenism of his people, and recal them to the Christian faith. For this purpose he applied, however, not to the Italian monks, as his uncle had done, but to the Culdees of lona; among whom he had been sheltered in his early youth, during the disasters of his family, and by whom he had been care- fully educated. The message was gladly received by the Culdee brethren, and Connan, a learned monk of their order, was forthwith sent to Northunihria. But the savage manners of the people appalled him, their inability to compre- hend his instructions disgusted him, so that, despairing of their conversion, he speedily returned home. While he was giving an account of his mission, and describing the Northumbrians as a race of impracticable savages, a voice of rebuke was suddenly heard in the assembly : " Brother, it seems to me that your want of success was owing to a want of condescension to your hearers. You should first have fed them with milk, according to the apostolic rule, until they were fitted to receive stronger food." All eyes were turned upon the speaker, who was Aidan. It was unanimously agreed by the assembly that he was the fittest person to attempt the conversion of the Northumbrians, and, on the charge being proposed to him, he cordially agreed. He arrived in England A.P. 634, and repaired to the court of king Oswald. And now a missionary work commenced in the Northumbrian kingdom such as missionary annals can seldom parallel, for both king and monk went hand in hand in the duty. Aidan, being a Celt, was either wholly ignorant of the Saxon language of his hearers or imperfectly acquainted with it; but, when he preached, Oswald was ready to interpret his addresses. The happiest results attended these joint labours. The ancient idolatry was utterly thrown aside, and Christianity established SAINT AIDAN. 37 over Deira and Bernicia. Still further to confirm this change, Aidan prevailed upon the king to transfer the episcopal see from York to Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, a bleak peninsula upon the coast of Northumberland, which probably the Culdee preferred from its resemblance to his own beloved lona; and here, accordingly, a monastery was erected, which Aidan supplied with monks from his own country. It is to be observed, also, that the form of Christianity thus established in Northumbria was different from that which the Italian priests had established over the rest of England. It was according to the primitive institutes of Saint Columba, and therefore essentially presbyterian in its form nnd discipline. Aidan, although he succeeded to the metropolitan rule of the extensive archbishopric of York, was contented to continue a simple presbyter, and nothing moi'e. He held no intercourse with the Roman pontiff, and ac- knowledged no superiority of episcopal authority. He repudiated those showy ceremonies and artificial forms which were so congenial to the Italian character, and which the foreign priests had been so careful to introduce into England. And, above all, instead of paying homage to tradition, as an authority indepen- dent of the Word, he would receive nothing as a religious rule save that which was contained in the sacred writings. Such was the religion of the Culdees; ind in this form it was introduced into Northumbria by Aidan and Oswald, fvho were both of them Culdees. But even if these important peculiarities hail been left undisturbed by the Western church, that aimed at universal conformity and universal rule, there were certain trivialities belonging to the Culdeeism of Northumberland that, sooner or later, was sure to provoke the hostility of the rest of England. The priests of the order of Columba shaved their foreheads in the form of a half-moon, after the Eastern, fashion, instead of having the Western tonsure, that was meant to represent a crown of thorns. Their season also of keeping Easter was according to the Asiatic calculation, and not that of the West. These were peculiarities which ever}' eye could detect at once, and were therefore sufficient matters for controversy among a simple people, whose views could penetrate no further; and, accordingly, the Easter and tonsure controversy became, in a few years after, the great subject of religious debate in England, by which the Culdees were expelled from the country. These dis- turbances, however, did not occur until both king and monk had entered into their rest. After the death of Oswald, who was slain in battle, the kingdom of North- umbria was once more parted into two sovereignties, those of Deira and Ber- nicia ; in the former of which Oswin was appointed king, and, in the latter, Oswio. It was, however a peaceful conjunction; and Aidan still continued, as before, to preside over the church of Northumberland. The character of Oswin appears to have fully resembled that of his amiable predecessor, and the bishop of Lindisfarne seems to have loved him with a still higher affection than even that which he bore for Oswald. Amidst the obscurity of that remote period, and the shadowy character of its actors, Bede tells us a touching story, in which the simple manners of the times, as well as the intercourse between the king and the bishop, are brought out in strong relief. Oswin had once presented to Aidan a fine horse. It happened that one day, as the Culdee was riding forth, he met a poor man, who asked of him an alms, and Aidan, having no money, bestowed on him the horse and its rich trappings. The king, on hearing of this, was displeased, and could not refrain from expressing his resentment when Aidan next dined with him. " Why were you so lavish of my favour," ho 38 WILLIAM AIRMAN. said, "as to give away my pad to a beggar? If you must needs mount him on horseback, could you not have given him one of less value? Or, if he wanted any other relief, you might have supplied him otherwise, and not have parted so easily with my gift." "You have not carefully considered this matter," replied Aidan, " for otherwise you could not set a greater value on the son of a mare, than on a son of God." In this way the affair ended for the present. Not long after, when the king returned from hunting, he saw the bishop, and, remembering what had lately occurred, he laid aside his sword, threw himself at the good man's feet, and asked his forgiveness for the rude words he had uttered. Aidan, grieved to see the king in this posture, immediately raised him, and declared that the whole matter was forgot. After this interview, however, Aidan was observed to be very sad ; and, on being asked the cause by ?ome of his monks, he burst into tears, and replied, " How can I be otherwise than afflicted? I foresee that Oswin's life will be short, for never have I beheld a prince so humble. His temper is too heavenly to dwell long among us, and, truly, the nation does not deserve the blessing of such a ruler." This mournful prediction was soon after accomplished by the death of Os win, who was assas- sinated in August, 651 ; and Aidan took the matter so deeply to heart, that he died a fortnight after. Such is the little that we know of Saint Aidan, the apostle of Northumber- land, and bishop of Lindisfarne. That he was great and good, and that he accomplished much, is evident from the old chronicles, and especially from the history of venerable Bede, from whom the foregoing account has been chiefly gathered. The Venerable has also added to his account three miracles per- formed by Aidan, one of which occurred after his death; but with these it is unnecessary to trouble the modern reader. It is more agreeable to turn to his character, as drawn by Bede himself, who lived during the close of the same century, and knew Aidan well, not only from the testimony of his apostolic labours, but the reports of the old men, who had heard his words, and witnessed his doings: " These things I have written," he says, " touching the person and actions of the man aforesaid, praising in his actions what is praiseworthy, and committing it to posterity for the behoof of those who read ; to wit, his concern for peace and charity, for abstinence and humility ; his utter freedom from wrath and avarice, from pride and vain-glory ; his readiness alike to obey and teach the Divine commands ; his diligence in reading and watching; his true sacerdotal authority in checking the proud and powerful, and, at the same time, his tenderness in comforting the afflicted, and relieving or defending the poor. To say all in few words, as far as we have been informed by those whc personally knew him, he took care to omit no part of his duty, but, to the utmost of his power, performed everything commanded in the writings of the evangelists, apostles, and prophets." AIKMAN, WILLIAM, a painter, of considerable merit, of the last century, was born, in Aberdeenshire, October 24, 1682. His father was William Aikman of Cairney, a man of eminence at the Scottish bar, who educated his son to follow his own profession. But a predilection for the fine arts, and a love of poetry, which gained him the friendship of Ramsay and Thomson, induced the youth to give up studying for the law, and turn his attention to painting. Having pro- secuted his studies in painting for a time at home under Sir John Medina, and also in England, he resolved to visit Italy, that he might complete his education as an artist, and form his taste, by an examination of the classic models of anti- WILLIAM AIOTAN. 39 quity ; and accordingly, in 1707, having sold his paternal estate near Arbroath, that he might leave home untrammelled, he went to Rome, where, during a period of three years, he put himself under the tuition of the best masters. He afterwards visited Constantinople and Smyrna, where the gentlemen of the Eng- lish factory wished him to engage in the Turkey trade ; an overture which he declined ; and returning to Rome, he there renewed his studies for a time. In 1712, he revisited his native country, and commenced practising his profession ; but, though his works were admired by the discerning few, he did not meet with adequate encouragement, the public being too poor at that time to purchase ela- borate works of art, and the taste for such works being then too imperfectly formed. At this period he formed an intimacy with Allan Ramsay, whose por- trait he afterwards painted. John, Duke of Argyle, who equally admired the artist and esteemed the man, regretting that such talents should be lost, at length prevailed upon Aikman, in 1723, to move with all his family to London. There, under the auspices of his distinguished friend, he associated with the most emi- nent British painters of the age, particularly Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose studies and dispositions of mind were congenial with his own. The duke also recom- mended him to many people of the first rank, particularly the Earl of Bur- lington, so well known for his taste in architecture; and he was thus able to be of much service to Thomson, who came to London soon after himself, as a literary adventurer. He introduced the poet of " The Seasons" to the brilliant literary circle of the day Pope, Swift, Gay, Arbuthnot, &c. and, what was perhaps of more immediate service, to Sir Robert Walpole, who aimed at being thought a friend to men of genius. Among the more intimate friends of Aik- man, was William Somerville, author of " The Chase," from whom he received an elegant tribute of the muse, on his painting a full-length portrait of the poet in the decline of life, carrying him back, by the assistance of another portrait, to his youthful days. This poem was never published in any edition of Soiner- ville's works. Aikman painted, for the Earl of Burlington, a large picture of the royal family of England ; all the younger branches being in the middle compartment, on a very large canvas, and on one hand a full-length portrait of Queen Caroline; the picture of the king (George II.) that king who never could endure " boetry or bainting," as he styled the two arts in his broken Eng- lish intended for the opposite side, was never finished, owing to the death of the artist. This was perhaps the last picture brought towards a close by Aikman, and it is allowed to have been in his best style ; it came into the possession of the Duke of Devonshire by a marriage alliance with the Burlington family. Some of his earlier works are in the possession of the Argyle and Hamilton families in Scotland ; his more mature and mellow productions are chiefly to be found in England, and a large portion at Blickling, in Norfolk, the seat of the Earl of Buckinghamshire ; these are chiefly portraits of noblemen, ladies, and gentlemen, friends of the earl. He died June 4, 1731, at his house, in Leicester Fields, and, by his own desire, his body was taken to Scotland for interment ; his only son, John (by his wife Marion Lawson, daughter of Mr Lawson, of Cairnmuir, in Peeblesshire), whose death immediately preceded his own, was buried in the same grave with him, in the Grey friars' churchyard, Edinburgh. A monument was erected over the remains of Mr Aikman, with the following epitaph by Mallet, which has been long since obliterated : Dear to the good and wise, dispraised by none. Here sleep in peace the father and the son. 40 WILLIAM A1KMAN. By v'rtue as by nature close allied The painter's genius, but without the pride. Worth unambitious, wit afraid to shine, * Honour's clear light, and friendship's warmth divine. The son, fair-rising, knew too short a date; But O how more severe the parent's fate! He saw him torn untimely from his side, i'elt all a lather's anguish wept, and died. The following verses, in which Thomson bewails him with all the warmth of grateful friendship, are only partially printed in that poet's works : O could I draw, my friend, thy genuine min I, Just as the living forms by thee designed! Of Raphael's figures none should fairer shine, Nor Titian's colours longer last than thine. A mind n wisdom old, in lenience young, 1'roiu fervid truth, whence every virtue sprung ; Where all was real, modest, plain, sincere; Worth above show, and goodness unsevere. Viewed round and round, as lucid diamonds shov/, Still, as you turn them, a revolving glow : So did his mind reflect with secret ray, In various virtues, Heaven's eternal day. Whether in high discourse it soared sublime And sprung impatient o'er the bounds of time, Or wandering nature o'er with raptured eye, Adored the hand that turned yon azure sky : Whether to social joy he bent his thought, And the right poise that mingling passions sought, Gay c nveree blest, or, in the thoughtful grove, Hid the heart open every source of love : In varying lights, still set before our eyes The just, the good, the social, and the wise. For such a death who can, who would refuse, The friend a tear, a verse the mournful muse? Yet pay we must acknowledgment to Heaven, Though snatch'd so soon, that AIRMAN e'er was given. Grateful from nature's banquet let us rise, Nor leave the banquet with reluctant eyes : A friend, when dead, is but removed from sight, Su k in the lustre of eternal light ; And, when the parting storms of life are o'er, May yet rejoin us on a happier shore. As those we love decay, we die in part ; String after string is severed from the heart ; Till loosened life at last but breathing clay Without one pang is glad to fall away. Unhappy he who latest feels the blow, Whose eyes have wept o'er every friend laid low; Dragged lingering on from partial death to death, And, dying, all he can resign is breath. In his style of painting, Aikman seems to have aimed at imitating nature in her most simple forms ; his lights are soft, his shades mellow, and his colouring mild and harmonious. His touch has neither the force nor the harshness of Rubens ; nor does he, like Reynolds, adorn his portraits with the elegance of adventitious graces. His compositions are distinguished by a placid tranquillity, WILLIAM AITON. ALEXANDER ALES OB ALESSE. 41 rather than a striking brilliancy of effect ; and his portraits may be more readily mistaken for those of Kneller than for the works of any other eminent artist. AITON, WILLIAM, an eminent horticulturist and botanist, was born, in 1731, at a village in the neighbourhood of Hamilton. Having been regularly bred to the profession of a gardener, as it was and still is practised by numbers of his countrymen, with a union of manual skill and scientific knowledge, he removed to England in 1754, and, in the year following, obtained the notice of the cele- brated Philip Miller, then superintendent of the physic garden at Chelsea, who employed him for some time as an assistant. The instructions which he received from that eminent gardener laid the foundation, it is said, of his future fortune. His industry and abilities were so conspicuous, that, in 1759, he was pointed out to the Princess- Do wager of Wales as a fit person to manage the botanical garden at Kew. His professional talents also procured him the notice of Sir Joseph Banks, and a friendship commenced which subsisted between them for life. Dr Solander and Dr Dryander were also among the number of his friends. The encouragement of botanical studies was a distinguished feature of the reign of George III., who, soon after his accession, determined to render Kew a repository of all the vegetable riches of the world. Specimens were accordingly procured from every quarter of the globe, and placed under the care of Mr Aiton, who showed a surprising degree of skill in their arrangement. Under his superintendence, a variety of improvements took place in the plan and edi- fices of Kew gardens, till they attained an undoubted eminence over every other botanical institution. In 1783, on a vacancy occurring in the superintendence of the pleasure gardens at Kew, Mr Aiton received the appointment from George III., but was, at the same time, permitted to retain his more important office. His labours proved that the king's favours were not ill bestowed ; for, in 1789, he published an elaborate description of the plants at Kew, under the title, " Hortus Kewensis," 3 vols. 8vo, with a number of plates. In this pro- duction, Mr Aiton gave an account of no fewer than 5600 foreign plants, which had been introduced from time to time into the English gardens; and so highly was the work esteemed, that the whole impression was sold within two years. A second and improved edition was published by his son, William Townsend Aiton, in 1810. After a life of singular activity and usefulness, distinguished, moreover, by all the domestic Virtues, Mr Aiton died on the 1st of February, 1793, of a schirrus in the liver, in the 63d year of his age.' He lies buried in the churchyard at Kew, near the graves of his distinguished friends, Zoffany, Meyer, and Gainsborough. He was succeeded by his son, Mr William Town- send Aiton, who was no less esteemed by George III. than his father had been, and who, for fifty years, ably superintended the botanical department at Kew, besides taking charge of the extensive pleasure-grounds, and being employed in the improvement of the other royal gardens. In 1841, he retired from office, when Sir William Jackson Hooker was appointed director of the botanic gardens. Mr Aiton died at Kew, in 1849, aged 84. ALES or ALESSE, ALEXANDER, a celebrated theologian of the sixteenth century, was born at Edinburgh, April 23d, 1500. He is first found in the situation of a canon in the cathedral of St Andrews, where he distinguished himself by entering into the fashionable controversy of the day against Luther. His zeal for the Roman Catholic religion was staggered by the martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton ; but it is not probable that his doubts would have been car- ried further, if he had not suffered persecution for the slight degree of scepticism 42 WILLIAM ALEXANDER. ;ilremly manifested. Being obliged to fly from St Andrews, he retired to Ger- many, where he became a thorough convert to the Protestant doctrines. The Reformation in England induced Ales to go to London, in 1535, where he was highly esteemed by Cranmer, Latimer, and Cromwell, who were at that time in favour with the king. Henry regarded him also with favour, and used to call him "his scholar." Upon the fall of Cromwell, he was obliged to return to Germany, where the Elector of Brandenburg appointed him professor of divinity at Frankfort-upon-the-Oder, in 1540. As a reformer, Ales did not always maintain the most orthodox doctrines; hence he was obliged, in 1542 to fly from his chair at Frankfort, and betake himself to Leipsic. He spent the remainder of hia life in that city, as professor of divinity, and died in 1565. His works are: l,"De necessitate et merito Bonorum Operuin, disputatio proposita in celebri academia Leipsica, ad 29 Nov. 16GO." 2, " Commentarii in evangelium Joannis, et in utramque epistolam ad Timotheum." 3, " Expositio in Psalmos Davidis." 4, " De Justificatione, contra Oscandrum." 5, " De Sancta Trinitate, cum confutatione erroris Valentini." 6, " llesponsio ad trigintu et duos articulos theologorurn Lovaniensium." The fifth in this list is the most favourable specimen of his abilities. ALEXANDER, WILLIAM, an eminent nobleman, statesman, and poet of the reign of James VI. and Charles I. The original rank of this personage was that of a small lauded proprietor or laird ; but he was elevated, by dint of his various accomplishments, and through the favour of the two sovereigns above-mentioned, to the rank of an earl. His family, which possessed the small estate of Menstrie, near Stirling, is said to have derived the name Alexander from the prenomen of their ancestor, Alexander Macdonald, a highlander, who had been settled in this property by the Earl of Argyle, whose residence of Castle Campbell is in the neighbourhood. "William Alexander is supposed to have first seen the light in 1680. Nature having obviously marked him for a higher destiny than that to which he was born, he received from his friends the best education which the time and place could afford, and, at a very early age, he accompanied the young Earl of Argyle upon his foreign travels, in the capacity of tutor. Previous to this period, when only fifteen years of age, he had been smit with the charms of some country beauty, " the cynosure of neighbouring eyes ;" on his return from the continent, his passion was found to have suffered no abatement. He spent some time in rural retirement, and wrote no fewer than a hundred sonnets, as a ventilation to the fervours of his breast ; but all his poetry was in vain, so far as the lady was concerned. She thought of matrimony, while he thought of love ; and accordingly, on being solicited by a more aged suitor, in other respects eli- gible, did not scruple to accept his hand. The poet took a more sensible way of consoling himself for this disappointment than might have been expected; he married another lady, the daughter and heiress of Sir William Erskine. 1 1 is century of sonnets was published in London in 1604, under the title of " Aurora, containing the First Fancies of the Author's Youth, by W. Alexander, of Men- strie." From the situation of Alexander's estate, near the residence of the king at Stirling, and in a vale which his majesty frequented for the pleasure of hawk- ing, he had early been introduced to royal notice ; and, accordingly, it appeal's that, when James removed to London, in 1603, the poet did not remain long behind, but soon became a dependent upon the English court. It is honourable to Alexander that in this situation he did not, like most court poets of that age, employ his pen in the adulation of majesty ; his works breathe a very different WILLIAM ALEXANDER. 43 strain. Having st'.tdied deeply the ancient philosophers and poets, he descanted on the vanity of grandeur, the value of truth, the abuse of power, and the burthen of riches. His moralizings assumed the strange shape of tragedies compositions not at all designed for the stage, but intended simply to embody the sentiments which arose in his mind upon such subjects as those we have mentioned. His first tragedy was grounded upon the story of Darius, and appeared at Edinburgh in 1(503. He afterwards republished it at London, in 1607, along with similar compositions upon the stories of Alexander, Croesus, and Caesar, under the title of " Monarchick Tragedies, by William Alexander, gentleman of the Princes' Privy Chamber." It would thus appear that he had now obtained a place in the household of Prince Henry ; to whom he had previously addressed a poem or par?enesis, designed to show how the happiness of a sovereign depends upon his choosing such councillors as can throw off private grudges, regard public con- cerns, and will not, to betray their seats, become pensioners. This poem, of vhich no copy of the original edition is known to exist, except one in the Uni- versity library at Edinburgh, was, after the death of Henry, addressed to Prince Charles, who then became heir-apparent ; an economy in poetical, not to speak of court business, which cannot be sufficiently admired. He was, in 1613, ap- pointed one of the gentlemen ushers of the presence to this unfortunate prince. King James is said to have been a warm admirer of the poems of Alexander, to have honoured him with his conversation, and called him " my philosophical poet" He was now aspiring to the still more honourable character of a divine poet, for in 1614, appeared at Edinburgh, his Largest and perhaps his mrst meritorious prodtiction, entitled, " Doomsday, or the Great Day of Judgment," which has been several times reprinted. Hitherto the career of Alexander had been chiefly that of a poet : it was henceforth entirely that of a courtier. Advanced to the .age of thirty-five, the pure and amiable temperament of the poet gave way before the calculating and mercenary views of the politician ; and the future years of his life are therefore less agreeable in recital than those which are past. In 1614, he was knighted by king James, and appointed to the situation of master of requests. In 1621, the king gave him a grant by his royal deed of the province of Nova Scotia, which as yet had not been colonized. Alexander designed at first to establish settlers upon this new country, and, as an inducement to the purchase of land, it was proposed that the king should confer, upon all who paid a hundred and fifty pounds for six thousand acres, the honour of a knight baronetcy. Owing to the perplexed politics of the last years of king James, he did not get this scheme car- ried into effect, but Charles had no sooner acceded than he resolved upon giving il his support. Alexander, in 1625, published a pamphlet, entitled, "An Encour- agement to Colonies," the object of which was to state the progress already made, to recommend the scheme to the nation, and to invite adventurers. It is also supposed that he had a hand in " A Brief Relation of the Discovery and Planta- tion of New England, and of sundry accidents therein occurring from the year 1607 to this present 1622: together with the state thereof as it now standeth, the general form of government intended, and the division of the whole territory into counties, baronies, &c." King Charles, who probably considered the scheme in a two-fold light, as a means of establishing a new colony, and of remunerating an old servant at the expense of others, conferred upon Sir William Alexander the rank of Lieutenant of New Scotland, and founded the necessary order of knights baronets of the same territory. The number of these baronets was not to exceed a hundred and fifty, and it was ordained that the title should be hereditary that they should take precedence of all ordinary knights and lairds, and of all other gentlemen, except Sir William Alexander, and that they 44 WILLIAM ALEXANDER. ^ioitl.1 have place in all his majestj's and his successors 1 armies, near and about the royal standard for the defenre thereof, with other honourable distinctions of precedency, to them, their wives, and heirs. The ceremony of infeftment or sea- sine was decreed to take place on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh, the earth and stone of which were held, by a fiction, to represent the component particles of certain baronies and lordships on the other side of the Atlantic. For the amusement of the reader, we shall give an account of the equivocal mode of pro- cedure adopted in this scheme, and of its shameful conclusion, from the fantastic pen of Sir Thomas Urqiihart. " It did not satisfy him," says Sir Thomas, in re- ference to Alexander, (Discovery of a most Exquisite Jewel, &c., bvo, I(i5'2,) ' to have a laurel from the Muses, and be esteemed a king among poets, but be must also be king of some new-found land ; and, like another Alexander, in- deed, searching after new worlds, have the sovereignty of Nova Scotia ! He was born a poet, and aimed to be a king ; therefore he would have his royal title from king James, who was born a king, and aimed to be a poet. Had be stopped there, it had been well; but the flame of his honour must have some oil therewith to nourish it; like another Arthur he must have his knights, though nothing limited to so small a number ; for how many soever, who could have looked but for one day like gentlemen, and given him but one hundred and fifty pounds sterling (without any need of a key for opening the gate to ente through the temple of virtue, which, in former times, was the only way to hon our,) they had a scale from him whereby to ascend unto the platforms of virtue ; .vhich they treading under their feet, did slight the ordinary passages, and to take the more sudden possession of the temple of honour, went upon obscure by- paths of their own, towards some secret angiports and dark postern doors, which were so narrow that few of them could get in, until they had left all their gallantry behind them : Yet such being their resolution, that in they would and be worshipful upon any terms; they misregarded all formerly used steps of promotion, accounting them but unnecessary; and most rudely pushing into the very sanctuary, they immediately hung out the orange colours," the colour of the ribbon by which the order was suspended, " to testify their conquest of the honour of knight baronet. f heir king nevertheless, not to stain his royal dignity, or to seem to merit the impu- tation of selling honour to his subjects, did, for their money, give them land, and that in so ample a measure, that every one of his knight baronets had, for his hun- dred and fifty pounds sterling, heritably disposed to him six thousand good and suffi- cient acres of Nova Scotia ground; which being at the rate of but sixpence an aci-vj, and not to be thought very dear; considering how prettily, in the respec- tive parchments of disposition, they were bounded and designed ; fruitful corn- fields, watered with pleasant rivers, running along most excellent and spacious meadows ; nor did there want abundance of oaken groves, in the midst of very fertile plains, or if it wanted anything it was the scrivener's or writer's fault, for he " [Alexander] " gave orders, as soon as he received the three thousand Scots marks, that there should be no defect of quantity, or quality, in measure or good- ness of land, and here ami there most delicious gardens and orchards ; with whatever else could, in matter of delightful ground, best content their fancies ; as if they had made purchase among them of the Elysian fields or Mahomet'* para- dise; and although there should have happened a thousand acres more to be put into the charter, or writing of disposition, than was agreed upon at fir.4, he cared not ; hulf a piece to the clerk was able to make him dispense with that But at List when he had enrolled three hundred knights, who for their hundred and fifty pieces each had purchased among them several millions of New Caledonian acres, confirmed to them and theirs for ever, under the great seal, the affixing whereof was to cost each of them but thirty pieces more ; finding that the society was not WILLIAM ALEXANDER. 45 likely to become any more numerous, and thai the ancient gentry of Scotland esteemed such a whimsical dignity to be a disparagement, rather than any addi- tion to their former honour ; he bethought himself of a course more profitable to himself and the future establishment of his own state ; in prosecuting whereoi without the advice of his knights, who represented both houses of parliament, clergy and all, like an absolute king indeed, he disposed heritably to the French for a matter of five or six thousand pounds English money, both the dominion and property of the whole country of that kingdom of Nova Scotia ; leaving the new baronets to search for land amongst the Seleites in the moon, or turn knights of the sun ; so dearly have they bought their orange ribband, which, all things considered, is, and will be, more honourable to them, or their posterity, than it is or hath been profitable to either." It thus appears that Alexan* der's Nova Scotian scheme, whatever might have been originally contemplated, degenerated at last into a mere means of raising money by the sale of titles ; a system too much practised in the English reign of James VI., and which gained, as it deserved, the contempt of all honourable minds. The territory of Nova Scotia afterwards fell into the hands of the French, who affected to believe that they had acquired a right to it by a treaty entered into with the king of Great Britain, in 1632, in which the country of Acadia was ceded to them. In the treaty of peace transacted between the two countries, in 1763, it was success- fully asserted by the British government that Nova Scotia was totally distinct from Acadia, and accordingly the territory reverted to Britain, along with Can- ada. The country, however, having become the property of other individuals during the usurpation of the French, it appears that the Nova Scotia baronets have very slight prospects of ever regaining the lands to which their titles were originally attached. In 1(526, Sir William Alexander, was, by the favour of Charles I., made secre- tary of state for Scotland; an office to which the salary of -e of' seventy-three. ANDERSON, ALEXANDER, a very eminent mathematician, born at Aberdeen, near the close of the sixteenth century. How or where he acquired his mathe- matical education is not known; he probably studied belles lettres and philoso- phy in his native university. He comes into notice at Paris, early in the seven- teenth century, as a private teacher or professor of mathematics. In that city, between the years 1612 and 1819, he published or edited various geometrical and algebraical tracts, which are conspicuous for their ingenuity and elegance. It is doubtful whether he was ever acquainted with the famous Vieta, Master of Requests at Paris, who died in 1603.; but his pure taste and skill in mathemati- cal investigation pointed him out to the executors of that illustrious man, who had found leisure, in the intervals of a laborious profession, to cultivate and extend the ancient geometry, and by adopting a system of general symbols, to lay the foundation, and begin the superstructure, of algebraical science, as the person most proper for revising and publishing his valuable manuscripts. Anderson, how- ever, did not confine himself to the duty of a mere editor; he enriched the text with learned comments, and gave neat demonsti-ations of those propositions which had been left imperfect. He afterwards produced a specimen of the application of geometrical analysis, which is distinguished by its clearness and classic elegance. The works of this eminent person amount to six thin quarto volumes, now very scarce. These are, 1. Supplementum Apollonii Redivivi: sive analysis pro- blematis hactenus desiderati ad Apollonii Pergaei doctrinam irt^i vtvatuv a Marino Ghetaldo Patritio Regiisino hujusque non ita pridem institutam, &c. Paris, 1612, 4to. This tract refers to the problem of inclinations, by which, in certain cases, the application of the curve called the conchoid is superseded. 2. AmoAoy/a : Pro Zetetico Apollonian! problematis a se jam pridem edito in siipplemento Apollonii Redivivi. Being an addition to the former work. Paris, 1615, 4to. 3. The edition of the works of Vieta. Paris, 1615, 4to. 4. Ad Angularum Sectionem Analytica Theoremata xctSohixuTipet, &c. Paris, 1615, 4to. 5. Vindiciae Archimedis, &c. Paris, 1616, 4to. 6. Alexandri An- dersoni Scoti Exercitationum Mathematicarum Decas Prima, &c. Paris, 1619, 4to. All these pieces, of this excellent geometrician, are replete with the finest spe- cimens of pure geometrical exercises that have ever perhaps been produced by any authors, ancient or modern. Besides these, literary history is not aware of any other publications by Anderson, though probably there may have been others. Indeed, from the last piece it fully appears that he had at least written, if not published, another, viz. A Treatise on the Mensuration of Solids, perhaps with a reference to gauging; as in several problems, where he critically examines the treatise of Kepler on cask-gauging, he often refers to his own work on stereo- metry. This eminent person was cousin-genuan to Mr David Anderson of Finshaugh, a gentleman who also possessed a singular turn for mathematical knowledge, and who could apply his acquirements to so many useful purposes that he was popu- larly known at Aberdeen by the name of Davie Do-a'-things. He acquired pro- digious local fame by removing a large rock, which had formerly obstructed the entrance to the harbour of Aberdeen. Mathematical genius seems to have been in some degree inherent in the whole family; for, through a daughter of Mr Da- vid Anderson, it reached the celebrated James Gregory, inventor of the reflecting telescope, who was the son of that lady, and is said to have received, from her, the elements of mathematical knowledge. From the same lady was descended the late Dr Reid of Glasgow, who was not less eminent for his acquaintance with the mathematics, than for his metaphysical writings. 54 JAMES ANDERSON. ANDERSON, JAMES, an eminent antiquary, was the son of the Rev. Patrick Anderson, who had been ejected for non-conformity at the Restoration, and after- wards suffered imprisonment in the Bass, for preaching in a conventicle at Edin- burgh. The subject of this memoir, whose brother, Adam, has already been commemorated, was born, August 5th, 1662, and in 1677, is found studying philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, where, after finishing a scholastic edu- cation, he obtained the degree of Master of Arts, on the 27th of May, 1680. He chose the law for his profession, and, after serving an apprenticeship under Sir Hugh Paterson of Bannockburn, was admitted a member of the society of writers to the signet in 169 1. In this branch of the legal profession, the study of written antiquities in some measure forces .itself upon the practitioner; and it appears that Anderson, though a diligent and able man of business, became in time too fond of the accessory employment to Qare much for the principal A circumstance which occurred in 1704, decided his fate by tempting him into the Held of antiquarian controversy. The question of the union of the two countries was then very keenly agitated on the one side with much jealous assertion of the national independency and on the other, with not only a contempt for the boasts of the Scots, but a revival of the old claims of England for a superiority or paramouncy over their country. A lawyer named Attwood, in 1704, pub- lished a pamphlet in which all the exploded pretensions of Edward I. were brought prominently into view, and a direct dominion in the cro\vn of England asserted over that of Scotland. For this work, Mr Anderson, though altogether unknown to Mr Attwood, was cited as an evidence and eye-witness, to vouch some of the most important original charters and grants by the kings of Scotland, which Attwood maintained were in favour of the point he Laboured to establish. 3Ir Anderson, in consequence of such an appeal, thought himself bound in duty to his country, to publish what he knew of the matter, .and to vindicate some of the best of the Scottish kings, who were accused by Attwood of a base and vo- luntary surrender of their sovereignty. Accordingly, in 1705, he published " An Essay, showing that the crown of Scotland is imperial and independent," Edin- burgh, 8vo. which was so acceptable to his country, that, besides a reward, thanks were voted to him by parliament, to be delivered by the lord Chancellor, in pre- sence of her Majesty's high Commissioner and the Estates; at the same time that Att wood's book, like others of the same nature, was ordered to be burnt at the cross of Edinburgh by the hands of the common hangman. Mr Anderson's pub- lication is now of little value, except for the charters attached to it in the shape of an appendix. This a'lair was the crisis of Anderson's fate in life. He had, in the course of his researches for the essay, collected a large mass of national papers; the study of charters was just then beginning to be appreciated by antiquaries; the enthu- siam of the nation was favourable, for the moment, to any undertaking which would show the ancient respectability of its separate system of government. Un- der all these circumstances, Anderson found it easy to secure the patronage of the Scottish estates towards a design for engraving and publishing a series of fac- similes of the royal charters, previous to the reign of James I., and of seals, me- dals, and coins, from the earliest to the present time. In November, 1706, he had a parliamentary grant of three hundred pounds towards this object He then proceeded vigorously with the work, and in March, 1707, had not only expend- ed the three hundred pounds granted by parliament, but five hundred and ninety pounds besides, which he had drawn from his own funds. A committee reported the facts; and the estates, while they approved of his conduct, recommended to the Queen to bestow upon him an additional contribution of one thousand and fifty pounds sterling. Another parliamentary act of *grace and one of the very JAMES ANDERSON, D.D. 55 last proceedings of the Scottish estates was to recommend him to the Queen " as a person meriting her gracious favour, in conferring any office or trust upon him, as her Majesty in her royal wisdom, shall think fit." Quite intoxicated with this success, Anderson now gave up his profession, and, resolving to devote himself entirely to the national service as an antiquary, re- moved to London, in order to superintend the progress of his work. Ihe event only added another proof to what is already abundantly clear that scarcely any prospects in the precarious fields of literature, ought to tempt a man altogether to resign a professional means of subsistence. r lhe money voted by the expiring parliament is said to have never been paid; the British senate perhaps consider ing itself not the proper heir of the Scottish estates. Apparently in lieu of money, he was favoured, in 1715, with the appointment of post-master general for Scotland ; but of this he was deprived in little more than two years. What progress he now made with his great work is not very clearly known. He is found, in 171 8, advertising that those who might wish to encourage it " could see specimens at his house, above the pest-office in Edinburgh." As the expense of engraving must have borne hard upon his diminished resources, he would appear to have digressed for some years into an employment of a kindred nature, at- tended with greater facilities of publication. In 1727, he published the two first volumes of his well known " Collections relating to the History of Man', Queen of Scotland" Edinburgh, 4to, which was speedily completed by the addition of two other volumes. This work contains a large mass of valuable original docu- ments connected with the Marian controversy; but George Chalmers, who went over the same ground, insinuates that there is too much reason to suspect his ho- nesty as a transcriber. If the prejudices of the two men are fairly balanced against the reputations which they respectively bear as antiquaries, we must ac- knowledge that the charge may not be altogether groundless. Anderson died in 1728 of a stroke of apoplexy, leaving his great work unfin- ished. The plates were sold, in 1729, by auction, at 530, and it was not till 1737 that the work appeared, under the title of " Selectus Diplomatum et Nu- mismatum Scotia? Thesaurus," the whole being under the care of the celebrated Thomas Ruddiman, who added a most elaborate preface. ANDERSON, JAMES, D.D. author of a large and usefid work, entitled, " Royal Genealogies," was the brother of Adam Anderson, author of the Commercial History. He was for many years minister of the Scots presbyterian church in Swallow-street, Piccadilly, and was well known among the people of that persua- sion in London, by the nick-name of Bishop Anderson. He was a learned but imprudent man, and lost a considerable part of his property from too deep dab- bling in the South-Sea scheme. His great work a an author was, " Royal Genealogies, or the Genealogical Tables of Emperors, Kings, and Princes, from Adam(!) to these Times," London, folio, 1732. The compilation of this huge work, in which he was aided by many eminent personages, whose families enter- ed into its plan, cost him, according to his own account, the labour of seven years. It is certainly the completes! work of the kind in existence, though with no pretensions to discrimination. The author says very frankly in his preface, that, " He has avoided all terms and expressions that may give offence to any nation or family, to any person or party ; having nothing to do with the national con- troversies of historians, nor with the ecclesiastical and religious debates of theolo- gians, nor with the politics of statesmen, nor with the private jangles of the cri- tics in a work of this kind, but only with facts and plain truth : so that he has let every nation enjoy its own faith; and if any find fault, he hopes they will readily excuse him, not having designed to offend them, and is willing to make satisfaction, if he lives to publish a second edition." Dr Anderson also wrotw JAMES ANDERSOT. *The Constitutions of the Free ^Masons," being the chaplain of that hotly in London. The dates of this worthy man's birth and death are not aswrtaiued. He lived in a house opposite to St James's church, Piccadilly. ANDERSON, JAMES, an agricidtur.il and miscellaneous writer of great merit, was the son of a fanner at Hermiston, in the county of Midlothian, where he was born in the year 173!). His father dying when he was very yo. He was the eldest son of the reverend James Anderson, minister of Roseneath, who was, in his turn, the eldest son of the reverend John Anderson, preceptor to John Duke of Argyle, afterwards minister of the gospel at Dum- barton, and whose memoir is given in the preceding article. The subject of this memoir, having the misfortune to lose his father in early life, was educated by his aunt Mrs Turner, widow of one of the ministers of the Hih church of Stirling. While residing at this town, where he received the rudi- ments of learning, he appeared as an officer in the burgher corps raised in February, 1740, to defend it against the forces of the young Chevalier. His conduct on this occasion was worthy of his distinguished ancestor, from whose example he appears to have derived that attachment to the principles of civil and religious liberty, which marked his character through life. The carabine and other arms which he carried on the walls of Stirling are preserved in the museum connected with his institution at Glasgow. He received the more advanced part of his education at the college of Glasgow, where, in 1756, he was appointed to be professor of oriental languages, being then in the thirtieth year of his age. It was not in this sphere that Mr Anderson was destined to shine with great- est lustre. His mind had a decided bent towards the exact sciences, and to the illustration of the arts with which they are connected. His translation, there- fore, to the chair of natural philosophy, which took place in 17(30, was an event highly agreeable to him, and also most fortunate for the world. While he too3s an early opportunity after this event, to fulfil an important private duty, by re- paying his aunt for the expenses of his education, he entered upon the business of his class with an enthusiastic ardour of application, which we may safely pro- nounce to have been without example in any Scottish university. Not contented with the ordinary duty of delivering a course of lectures though he performed that duty in a manner alone sufficient to obtain distinction he was indefatig- able in studying and exemplifying the application of science to mechanical practice ; visiting, for this purpose, the workshops of arti/ans in the town, and receiving, in return for the scientific doctrine which he had to communicate, a full equivalent of experimental knowledge. The most estimable characteristic of profes- sor Anderson, was a liberal and diffusive benevolence in regard to the instruction of his race. Under the inspiration of this feeling, which was in that age more rare, and therefore more meritorious than it is at present, he instituted, in ad- dition to his usual class, which was strictly mathematical, one for the working classes, and others whose pursuits did not enable them to conform to the pre- scribed routine of academical study, illustrating his precepts by experiments, so as to render it in the highest degree attractive. He continued to teach this anti-toga class, as he called it, twice every week, during the session, to the end of his life ; and it would not be easy to estimate the aggregate of good which he thus rendered to his fellow-creatures. As an instance of the liberal good sense by which he was governed in his eminently useful scheme, it is related that, a mechanic having complained to bis assistant, that he had scarcely time, after leaving ::AL IN ANPEH^ON'S ITNIVERSITY. GLASGOW BLA-CKIE i SON. 3LA.SaOW. EDINBURGH fcLONBON JOHN ANDERSOX, F.R.S. 61 his work, to cluinge liis dress before coining to the class, and having suggested the propriety of the operatives being allowed to attend without such change, Mr Anderson, being apprized of the wish so expressed, at once acceded lo it. His was a mind too strongly bent on mere usefulness, to regard empty form. Yet, as a lecturer, lie is allowed to have himself exhibited a surpassing elegance of manner. His style was easy and graceful, his command of language unlimit- ed, and the skill and success with which his manifold experiments were perform- ed, could not be surpassed. He excited the interest, and attracted the attention of his pupils, by the numerous and appropriate anecdotes with which he illustrat- ed and enlivened his lectures. Enthusiastic in his profession, his whole ambi- tion and happiness consisted in making himself useful to mankind, by the dis- semination of useful knowledge ; and nothing afforded him purer pleasure than hearing that any of his pupils had distinguished themselves in the world. The only distinct work which he published in connection with his favourite science, was a valuable one, entitled, " Institutes of Physics," which appeared in 1786, and went through five editiors during the next ten years. /t the commencement of those political changes in France, which ended in such unhappy results, Mr Anderson, as might have been predicated from his ar- dently liberal and enlightened character, was among those who sympathized most warmly with the proceedings of the emancipated people. Previous to th.nt period, he had prosecuted a taste for the military art, and invented a species of gun, the recoil of which was stopped by the condensation of common air, within the body of the carriage. Having in vain endeavoured to attract the attention of the British government to this invention, he went to Paris, in 1791, carrying with him a model, which he presented to the national Convention. The govern- ing party in France at once perceived the benefit which would be derived from this invention, and ordered Mr Anderson's model to be hung up in their hall, with the following inscription over it " THE GIFT OF SCIENCE TO LIBERTY." Whilst he was in France, he got a six-pounder made from his model, with which he made numerous experiments in the neighbourhood of Paris, at which the famous Paul Jones, amongst others, was present; and who gave his decided approbation of the gun, as likely to prove highly useful in landing troops from boats, or firing from the round tops or poops of ships of war. Mr Anderson, at this period, took a keen interest in the transactions which passed before his eyes. He was present when Louis XVI. was brought back from Varennes ; and on the 1 4th of July, on the top of the altar of liberty, and in the presence of half a million of Frenchmen, he sang Te Deum with the bishop of Paris, when the king took the oath to the Constitution, amen being said to the cere- mony by the discharge of five hundred pieces of artillery. As the Emperor of Germany had drawn a military cordon around the frontiers of France, to prevent the introduction of French newspapers into Germany, he suggested the expe- dient of making small balloons of paper, varnished with boiled oil, and filled with inflammable air, to which newspapers and manifestoes might be tied. This was accordingly practised, and when the wind was favourable for Germany, they were sent off, and descending in that country, were, with their appendages, pick- ed up by the people. They carried a small flag or streamer, of which the fol- lowing is a translation : O'er hills and dales, and lines of hostile troops, I float majestic, Bearing the laws of God and Nature to oppressed men, And bidding them with arms their rights maintain." Mr. Anderson died. January 13th, 1796, in the 70th year of his a?e. and the 41st year of his professorship, directing, by his will, dated May 7th, 1795. that 62 ROBERT ANDERSON, M.D. of his effects, of every kind, should be devoted to the establishment of an educational institution in Glasgow, to be denominated Anderson's University, for the use of the unacademical classes ; so that, even while he was consigned to the silent dust, he might still, by means of his honourably acquired wealth, prove of service to those whom he had benefited so much, during his own life, by personal exertion. His will was carried into effect on the 9th of June following, by the magistrates granting a charter of incorporation to the proposed institution. According to the design ol the founder, there were to be four colleges for arts, medicine, law, and theology besides an initiatory school. Each college was to consist of nine professors, the senior professor being the president or dean. As the funds, however, were inadequate to the plan, it was at first, commenced with only a single course of lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry, by Dr Thomas Garnett, well known for his numerous scientific and medical works, and also for his " Tour through the Highlands and part of the Western Isles of Scotland." This course was attended for the first year by nearly a thousand persons of both sexes. In 1798, a professor of mathe- matics and geography was appointed. The splendid apparatus and library of the founder, which were valued at L.3000, added greatly to the advantages of the infant institution. In 1*799, Dr Garnett, being appointed professor in the Royal Institution at London, was succeeded by the eminent Dr Birbeck, who, in addition to the branches taught by his predecessor, introduced a familiar system of philosophical and mechanical information to five hundred operative mechanics, free of all expense, thus giving rise to Mechanics' Institutions. The Andersonian institution was placed, by the will of the founder, under the inspection and control of the Lord Provost, ami many other honourable persons, as ordinary visitors, and under the more immediate superintendence of eighty-one trustees, who are elected by ballot, and remain in office for life. Since the first establishment of the University, as it may very pro- perly be called, it has gradually been extended, nearer and nearer to the original design of the founder. There are now [1852] fifteen professors, who deliver lec- tures on surgery, institutes of medicine, chemistry, practical chemistry, midwifery, practice of medicine, anatomy, materia medica, pharmacy, and dietetics, medical jurisprudence and police, mathematics, natural philosophy, botany, logic, geography, modern languages, English literature, drawing, and painting, hat- ever might be his moral failings, is allowed to have had a chaste classical taste, and a pure vein of humour. Armstrong had sufficient professional interest in 1760, to obtain the ap- pointment of physician to the army in Germany. From that country he wrote "Day, a poem," addressed as an Epistle to John Willies, Esq. This lively piece, which professes to embody an account of all the proper indulgences, moral and physical, of twenty-four hours, was, it is said, published in an imperfect shape, by some clandestine editor. It was never added to the collected works of Dr Armstrong, till Dr Anderson admitted it into his edition of the British Poets. After the peace of 1763, Dr Armstrong returned to London, and resumed his practice, but with no eager desire of increasing the moderate competency he now enjoyed. He continued after this period rather to amuse than to exert himself in literary productions, chiefly spending his time in the society of men of wit and taste like himself. In 1771, he made a tour into France and Italy, in company with the celebrated Fuseli, who survived him for nearly fifty years, and always spoke highly of Dr Armstrong's amiable character. In Italy lie took a tender farewell of his friend Smollett, to whom he Wcis much attached, and who died soon after. On returning home, he published an account of his travels, under the name of Lancelot Temple. The latter years of Dr Armstrong's life were embittered by one of those quar- rels which, arising between persons formerly much attached, are at once the most envenomed, and the most productive of uneasiness to the parties. In his poem of Day, he had asked, among other things, " What crazy scribbler reigns the present vrit ?" which the poet Churchill very properly took to himself, and resented in the fol- lowing passage in his poem of " The Journey :" Let them with Armstrong, taking leave of sense, Read musty lectures on Benevolence ; JOHN ARMSTRONG, M.D. 77 Or con the pages of his gaping Day, 1 Where all his former fame was thrown away, Where all but barren labour was forgot, And the vain stiffness of a lettered Scot; Let them with Armstrong pass the term of light, But not one hour of darkness ; when the night Suspends this mortal coil, when memory wakes, When for our past misdoings conscience takes A deep revenge, when by reflection led She draws his curtains, and looks comfort dead, Let every muse be gone ; in vain he turns, And tries to pray for sleep ; an JEtna burns, A more than ./Etna in his coward breast, And guilt, with vengeance armed, forbids to rest; Though soft as plumage from young Zephyr's wing His couch seems hard, and no relief can bring; Ingratitude hath planted daggers there, No good man can deserve, no brave man bear. We have no hesitation in saying that this severe satire was not justified either by the offence which called it forth, or by the circumstances on which it was found- ed. Wilkes, the associate of Churchill, had lent money to Armstrong on some occasion of peculiar distress. When the attacks of Wilkes upon Scotland led to animosities between the two friends, it was not to be expected that the recollec- tion of a former obligation was necessarily to tie up the natural feelings of Dr Armstrong, and induce him to submit rather to the certain charge of meanness of spirit, than the possible imputation of ingratitude. Neither could Wilkes have fairly expected that the natural course of the quarrel was to be stayed by such a sub- mission on the part of his former friend. It would have been equally mean for the obliged party to have tendered, and for the obliging party to have accepted such a submission. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Dr Armstrong, in giving way to resentment against Wilkes, was chargeable, properly, with no blame ex- cept that of giving way to resentment ; and if it is to be supposed, from the character of the poet in respect of irritability, that the resentment would have taken place whether there had been a debt of kindness standing undischarged between the parties or not, we cannot really see how this contingent circumstance can enhance his offence. There is unfortunately too great reason to suppose, that, if the obligation tend- ed to increase the blame of either party, it was that of Wilkes, who, from almost incontestable evidence, appears to have made a most ungenerous use of the ad- vantage he had acquired over his former friend. Not only must he bear a por- tion of the guilt of Churchill's satire, which could have only been written as a transcript of his feelings, and with his sanction, but he stands almost certainly guilty of a still more direct and scurrilous attack upon Dr Armstrong, which ap- peared in a much more insidious form. This was a series of articles in the well known Public Advertiser, commencing with a letter signed Dies, which appeared to proceed from an enemy of the patriot, but, in the opinion of Dr Armstrong, was written by the patriot himself: " He [Wilkes]," says this writer, " always took more delight in exposing his friends than in hurting his enemies. I am assured that a very worthy and in- genious friend of this impostor trusted him with a jeu d'esprit of a poem, incor- rect indeed, but which bore every mark of a true, though ungoverned genius. This poem, rough as it was, he earned to A. Millar, late bookseller in the Strand, 1 This poem was full of large hiatus supplied by asterisks. 78 JOHN ARMSTRONG, M.D. and published it in his friend's name, without his knowledge. This is a fact, Mr Printer; therefore, I think, Mr W. should let alone Scotch writers." Occasion was taken in the next day's publication to give a refutation of this pretended attack, in the following terms : " Your correspondent, Sir, is pleased to appeal to a dead bookseller, I appeal to the living author, now in London. lie desired the poem might be published: it was written for the public eye : he directed the bookseller to call on Mr AV. for the copy. The bookseller produced his credentials, under the author's own hand, upon which Mr W. gave him the manuscript of the poem. It was after- wards published in the kindest way for the author's reputation, as a Fragment. I believe he will not choose to restore the passages, which were omitted in the first edition of 1760. When he does, the kindness, and perhaps the judgment of the editor will appear, I am told, in a very strong and favourable light. The poem was not published till the bookseller had received a second positive order for that purpose, from the author, after several objections to the publication had been transmitted to him in Germany, and amendments made by himself. It was a favourite child not without merit, although scarcely so much as the fond father imagined. Mr Churchill wrote the four following lines on that poem, which were never forgiven. They are in the Journey. ' Or con the pages of his gaping Day, Where all his former fame was thrown away, Where all but barren labour was forgot, And the vain stiffness of a letler'd Scot.' TRUTH." A week after, a letter signed "Nox," in the same tone with that signed " TRUTH," appeared in the Public Advertiser. It is impossible to doubt that Mi Wilkes was at the bottom of the whole plot, and either wrote the letters himseli or employed his friend Churchill to do so. 2 2 This more particularly appears from the report of a conversation which took place on the 7th of April, between Dr Armstrong and Mr Wilkes, which appears to have been noted down on the same day by the latter, and was published in the Gentleman's Maga- zine, for 1792, thirteen years after the death of Dr Armstrong. The incensed poet entered his former friend's lodgings, in Prince's Court, and, without the least ceremonial or compliment, commenced the follow ing dialogue which, as a curious piece of literary history, we have given entire : Dr Armstrong. Did you, Sir, write the letters in the Public Advertiser? . Mr Wilkes. What letters do you mean, Doctor? There are many letters almost every day in the Public Advertiser. Dr A. Sir, 1 mean the three letters about me, and Day, Day, Sir. Mr W. You may ask the printer, Mr Woodfall. rie has my orders to name me whenever he thinks it proper, as the author of every thing I write in his paper. Dr. A. I believe you wrote all those letters. Mr. W. What all three, Doctor ? 1 am very roughly treated in one of them, in the first signed Dies. Dr. A. I believe you wrote that to bring on the controversy. I am almost sure of it. Mr. W. 1 hope you are truly informed in other things. I know better than to abuse myself in that manner, and I pity the author of such wretched stuff. Dr A. Did you write the other letters, Sir? Mr W. The proper person to inquire of, is Mr Woodfall. I will not answer interroga- tories. My time would pass in a strange manner, if I was to answer every question which any gentleman chose to put to me about anonymous letters. Dr A. Whoever has abused me, Sir, is a villain ; and your endeavours, Sir, to set Scot- land and England together are very bad. most ready to answer the call. Dr A. D n Lord Bute! It had been better for Scotland he had never been born. He has done us infinite mischief. Mr W. And its too; but 1 suppose we are not met for a dish of politics? Dr A. No ; but 1 wish there had been no union. I am sure England is the gainer by it Mr W. I will not make an essay on the advantages and disadvantages of the union. JOHN ARMSTRONG, M.D. 79 Armstrong died at his house in Russel Street, Covent Garden, September 7, 1779, in consequence of an accidental contusion in his thigh, received while getting into a carriage. He was found, to the surprise of the world, to have saved the sum of 2000 out of Jiis moderate income, which for many years had consisted of nothing more than his half-pay. Dr Armstrong was much beloved and respected by his friends for his gentle and amiable dispositions, as Avell as his extensive knowledge and abilities ; but a kind of morbid sensibility preyed upon his temper, and a languid listlessness too frequently interrupted his intellectual efforts. With Thomson's Castle of Dr A. I hate politics ; but I have been ill used by you, Dr Wilkes, on the occasion. Mr W . On the contrary, Doctor, I was the injured friend. Dr A. I thought you for many years the most amiable friend in the world, and loved your company the most; but you distinguished yourself by grossly abusing my country men in the Isorth Briton although I never read much of that paper. Mr W. You passed your time, I am satisfied, much better. Who told you, Doctor, what particular numbers 1 wrote ? It is droll, but the bitterest of these papers, which was attri- buted to me, was a description of Scotland, first printed in the last century, on Charles I.'s return from thence in 1683. Were you ever, Doctor, personally attacked by me ? Were you not, although a Scotsman, at the very time of the North Briton, complimented by me, in conjunction with Churchill, in the best thing I wrote, the mock ' Dedication to Morti- mer? Dr A. To be praised along with such a writer, I think an abuse. Mr W. The world thinks far otherwise of that wonderful genius Churchill; but you, Doctor, have sacrificed private friendship at the altar of politics. After many years of mu- tual intercourse of good offices, you broke every tie of friendship with me on no pretence but a suspicion, for you did not ask for proof, of my having abused your country, that coun- try I have for years together heard you inveigh against, in the bitterest terms, for Hotlines: and nationality. Dr A. 1 only did it in joke, Sir; you did it with bitterness; but it was my country. Mr W. No man has abused England so much as Shakspeare, or France so much as Voltaire; yet they remain the favourites of two great nations, conscious of their own supe- riority. Were you, Doctor, attacked by me in any one instance? Was not the most friendly correspondence carried on with you the whole time, till you broke it off by a letter, in 1763, in which you declared to me, that you could not with honour associate with one vho had distinguished himself by abusing your country, and that you remained with all due sincerity 'f I remember that was the strange phrase. Dr A. You never answered that letter, Sir. Mr W. What answer could I give you, Doctor ? You had put a period to the inter- course between us. 1 still continued to our common friends to sptak of you in terms of respect, while you were grossly abusing me. You said to Bcswell, Millar, and others, " 1 hope there is a hell, that Wilkes may lie in it" Dr A. In a passion I might say so. People do not often speak their minds in a passion. Mr W. 1 thought they generally did, Doctor ! Dr A. 1 was thoroughly provoked, although I still acknowledge my great pecuniary obligations to you although, 1 dare say, 1 would have got the money elsewhere. Mr W. 1 was always happy to render you every service in my power; and I little ima- gined a liberal mind, like yours, could have been worked up by designing men to write me such a letter in answer to an affectionate one I sent you, in the prospect of jour return. Dr A. 1 was happier with you than any man in the world for a great many years, and complimented you not a little in the Day, and you did not write to me for a year and a half after that. Mr W. Your memory does not serve you faithfully, Doctor. In three or four months at farthest, you had two or three letters from me together, on your return to the head-quar- ters of the army. I am abused in Dies for that publication, and the manner, both of which yuu approved. Dr A. 1 did so. Mr W. 1 was abused at first, I am told, in the manuscript of Diet, for having sold the copv, and put the money in my pocket ; but that charge was suppressed in the printed letter. Dr A. 1 know nothing of that, and will do you justice. Mr W. Will you call upon Mr D , our common friend, your countryman, and ask him what he thinks of your conduct to me, if it has not been wholly unjustifiable? Dr A. Have I your leave to ask Mr Woodfall in your name about ihe letters ? Mr W. I have already told you, Doctor, what directions he has fn ni me. Take four- and-twenty hours to consider what you have to do, and let me know th.' i . suiu Dr A. 1 am sorry to have taken up so much of your time, Sir. Mr W. It stands in no need of an apology, Doctor. 1 am glad to see you. Good mor- ow - N. B. These minutes were taken down the same afternoon, and sent to a fnend. 80 HUGO ARNOT. Indolence he is appropriately connected, both as a figure in the piece and as a contributor to the verse. The following is his portraiture : With him was sometimes joined in silent walk, (Profoundly silent for they never spoke) One shyer still, who quite detested talk; Oft stung by spleen, at once away he broke. To groves of pine, and broad o'ershtidowing oak, There, inly thrilled, he wandered all alone, And on himself his pensive fury wroke : He never uttered word, save, when first shone The glittering star of eve " Thank heaven ! the day is done ! " His contributions consist of four stanzas descriptive of the diseases to which the votaries of indolence finally become martyrs. The rank of Dr Armstrong as a poet is fixed by his Art of Preserving Health, which is allowed to be among the best didactic poems in the language. It is true, this species of poetry was never considered among the highest, nor has it been able to retain its place among the tastes of a modern and more refined age. Armstrong, however, in having improved upon a mode of composition fashionable in his own time, must still be allowed considerable praise. " His style," accord- ing to the judgment of Dr Aikin, " is distinguished by its simplicity by a free use of words which owe their strength to their plainness by the rejection of ambitious ornaments, and a near approach to common phraseology. His sen- tences are generally short and easy ; his sense clear and obvious. The full extent of his conceptions is taken in at the first glance ; and there are no lofty mysteries to be unravelled by a repeated perusaL What keeps his language from being prosaic, is the vigour of his sentiments. He thinks boldly, feels strongly, and therefore expresses himself poetically. When the subject sinks, his style sinks with it ; but he has for the most part excluded topics incapable either of vivid description, or of the oratory of sentiment He had from nature a musical ear, whence his lines are scarcely ever harsh, though apparently with- out much study to render them smooth. On the whole, it may not be too mucli to assert, that no writer in blank verse can be found more free from stiffness and affectation, more energetic without harshness, and more dignified without formality." ARNOT, HUGO, a historical and antiquarian writer of the eighteenth century, was the son of a merchant and ship-proprietor at Leith, where he was born, December 8th, 1749. His name originally was Pollock, which he changed in early life for Arnot, on falling heir, through his mother, to the estate of Balcor- mo in Fife. As " Hugo Arnot of Balcormo, Esq.," he is entered as a member of the Faculty of Advocates, December 5, 1772, when just about to complete his twenty-third year. Previous to this period, he had had the misfortune to lose his father. Another evil which befell him in early life was a settled asthma, the result of a severe cold which he caught in his fifteenth year. As this disorder was always aggravated by exertion of any kind, it became a serious obstruction to his progress at the bar : some of his pleadings, nevertheless, were much ad- mired, and obtained for him the applause of the bencli. Perhaps it was this interruption of his professional career which caused him to turn his attention to literature. In 1779, appeared his " History of Edinburgh," 1 vol., 4to. a work of much research, and greatly superior in a literary point of view to the gene- rality of local works. The style of the historical part is elegant and epigram- matic, with a vein of causticity highly characteristic of the author. From this elaborate work the author is said to have only realized a few pounds of profit ; a piratical impression, at less than half the price, was published almost simul- HUGO ARNOT. 81 taneously at Dublin, and, being shipped over to Scotland in great quantities, completely threw the author's edition out of the market A bookseller's second edition, as it is called, appeared after the author's death, being simply the re- mainder of the former stock, embellished with plates, and enlarged by some additions from the pen of the publisher, Mr Creech. Another edition was pub- lished in 8vo, in 1817. Mr Arnot seems to hare now lived on terms of literary equality with those distinguished literary and professional characters who were his fellow-townsmen and contemporaries. He did not, however, for some years publish any other considerable or acknowledged work. He devoted his mind chiefly to local subjects, and sent forth numerous pamphlets and newspaper essays, which had a considerable effect in accelerating or promoting the erec- tion of various public works. The exertions of a man of his public spirit and enlarged mind, at a time when the capital of Scotland was undergoing such a thorough renovation and improvement, must have been of material service to the community, both of that and of all succeeding ages. Such they were acknow- ledged to be by the magistrates, who bestowed upon him the freedom of the city. We are told that Mr Arnot, by means of his influence in local matters, was able to retard the erection of the South Bridge of Edinburgh for ten years not that he objected to such an obvious improvement on its own account, but only in so far as the magistrates could devise no other method for defraying the ex- pense than by a tax upon carters ; a mode of liquidating it, which Mr Arnot thought grossly oppressive, as it fell in the first place upon the poor. He also was the means of preventing for several years the formation of the present splen- did road between Edinburgh and Leith, on account of the proposed plan (which was afterwards unhappily carried into effect,) of defraying the expense by a toll ; being convinced, from what he knew of local authorities, that, if such an exac- tion were once established, it would always, on some pretext or other, be kept up. In 1 7 85, Mr Arnot published " A Collection of Celebrated Criminal Trials in Scot- land, with Historical and Critical Remarks," 1 voL 4to.; a work of perhaps even greater research than his history of Edinburgh, and written in the same acutely metaphysical and epigrammatic style. In the front of this volume appears a large list of subscribers, embracing almost all the eminent and considerable per- sons in Scotland, with many of those in England, and testifying of course to the literary and personal respectability of Mr Arnot This work appeared without a publisher's name, probably for some reason connected with the following cir- cumstance. Owing perhaps to the unwillingness of the author to allow a suffi- cient profit to the booksellers, the whole body of that trade in Edinburgh refus- ed to let the subscription papers and prospectuses hang in their shops ; for which reason the author announced, by means of an advertisement in the newspapers, that these articles might be seen in the coffee-houses. Mr Arnot received the sum of six hundred pounds for the copies sold of this work, from which he would have to pay the expenses of printing a thin quarto : it thus happened that what was rather the least Laborious of his two works, was the most profitable. Mr Arnot only survived the publication of his Criminal Trials about a twelvemonth. The asthma had ever since his fifteenth year been making rapid advances upon him, and his person was now reduced almost to a shadow. While still young, he carried all the marks of age, and accordingly the traditionary recollections of the historian of Edinburgh always point to a man in the extreme of life. Poi haps nothing could indicate more expressively the miserable state to which Mr Arnot was reduced by this disease, than his own halt-ludicrous, half-pathetic ex- clamation, on being annoyed by the bawling of a man selling sand on the streets : " The rascal !" cried the unfortunate invalid, " he spends as much breath in a minute as would serve me for a month !" Among the portraits and 82 HUGO ARNOT. caricatures of the well known John Kay, may be found several faithful, though somewhat exaggerated, memorials of the emaciated person of Hugo Arnot. As a natural constitutional result of this disease, he was exceedingly nervous, and liable to be discomposed by the slightest annoyances : on the other hand, he possessed such ardour and intrepidity of mind, that in youth he once rode on a spirited horse to the end of the pier of Leitli, while the waves were dashing over it, and every beholder expected to see him washed immediately into the sea ! On another occasion, having excited some hostility by a political pamphlet, and being summoned by an anonymous foe to appear at a particular hour in a lonely part of the King's Park, in order to fight, he went and waited four hours on the spot, thus perilling his life in what might have been the ambuscade of a deadly enemy. By means of the same fortitude of character, he beheld the gradual approach of death with all the calmness of a Stoic philosopher. The magistrates of Leith had acknowledged some of his public services, by the ominous compli- ment of a piece of ground in their church-yard; and it was the recreation of the last weeks of Mr Arnot's life to go every day to observe the progress made by the workmen in preparing this place for his own reception. It is related that he even expressed considerable anxiety lest his demise should take place before the melancholy work should be completed. He died, November 20th, 1786, when on the point of completing his 37th year; that age so fatal to men of genius that it may almost be styled their climacteric. He was interred in .he tomb fitted up by himself at South Leith. Besides his historical and local works, he had published, in 1777, a fanciful metaphysical treatise, entitled, "Nothing," which was originally a paper read before a well-known debating- club styled the Speculative Society; being probably suggested to him by the poem of the Earl of Rochester on the equally impalpable subject of Silence. If any disagreeable reflection can rest on Mr Aruot's memory for the free scope lie has given to his mind in this little essay a freedom sanctioned, if not excused, by the taste of the age he must be held to have made all the amends in his power by the propriety of his deportment in later life ; when he entered hear- tily and regularly into the observances of the Scottish episcopal communion, to which he originally belonged. If Mr Arnot was any thing decidedly in poli- tics, he was a Jacobite, to which party he belonged by descent and by religion, and also perhaps by virtue of his own peculiar turn of mind. In modern poli- tics, he was quite independent, judging all men and all measures by no other standard than their respective merits. In his professional character, he was animated by a chivalrous sentiment of honour worthy of all admiration. He was so little of a casuist, that he would never undertake a case, unless he wore perfectly self-satisfied as to its justice and legality. He had often occasion to refuse employment which fell beneath his own standard of honesty, though it might have been profitable, and attended by not the slightest shade of disgrace. On a case being once brought before him, of the merits of which he had an ex- ceedingly bad opinion, he said to the intending litigant, in a serious manner, " Pray, what do you suppose me to be ?" " Why," answered the client, " I un- derstand you to be a lawyer." " I thought, Sir," said Arnot sternly, " you took me for a scoundrel" The litigant, though he perhaps thought that the major in- cluded the minor proposition, withdrew abashed. Mr Arnot left eight children, all rery young ; and the talent of the family appears to have revived in a new genera- tion, viz., in the person of his grandson, Dr David Boswell Reid, whose " Elements of Chemistry " has taken its place amongst the most useful treatises on the science, and wbo was selected by Government, on account of bis practical skill, to plan and super- intend the ventilation of the new houses of parliament, in the prosecution of which object he has for several ypars been conducting the most costly and prolonged, if not the most successful, experiment of the kind ever made. SIR ROBERT AYTON. 83 AYTON, (Sra) ROBERT, an eminent poet at the court of James VI., was a younger son of Andrew Ayton of Kinaldie, in Fife, and was born in the year 1570. From the Registers of St Andrews University, it appears that he was incorporated or enrolled as a student in St Leonard's College, December 3, 1584, and took his master's degree, after the usual course of study, in the year 1588. Subsequently to this, he resided for some time in France; whence, in 1603, he addressed an elegant panegyric in Latin verse, to king James, on his accession to the crown of England, which was printed at Paris the same year ; and this panegyric had, no doubt, some influence in securing to the author the favour of that monarch, by whom he was successively appointed one of the gen- tlemen of the bed-chamber, and private secretary to his queen, Anne of Denmark, besides receiving the honour of knighthood. He was, at a later period of his life, honoured with the appointment of secretary to Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I. It is recorded on Ayton's funeral monument, as a distinction, that he had been sent to Germany as ambassador to the Emperor, with a work pub- lished by king James, which is supposed to have been his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance. If this conjecture be correct, it must have been m 1609, when his majesty acknowledged a work published anonymously three years before, and inscribed it to all the crowned heads of Europe. During Ayton's residence abroad, as well as at the court of England, he lived in intimacy with, and se- cured the esteem of the most eminent persons of his time. " He was acquainted," says Aubrey, " with all the wits of his time in England ; he was a great acquain- tance of Mr Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, whom Mr Hobbes told me he made use of, together with Ben Jonson, for an Aristarchus, when he made his Epistle dedicatory, for his translation of Thucydides." To this information, we may add, as a proof of this respect on the part of Ben Jonson, that, in his conversa- tions with Drummond of Hawthornden, he said, "Sir Robert Ayton loved him (Jonson) dearly." Sir Robert Ayton died at London, in March, 1637-8, in the 68th year of his age. He lies buried in the south aisle of the choir of Westminster Abbey, at the corner of King Henry the Fifth's Chapel, under a handsome monument of black marble, erected by his nephew, David Ayton of Kinaldie ; having his bust in brass gilt, which has been preserved, while that of Henry, the hero of Agin- court, (said to have been of a more precious metal,) has long since disappeared. The following is a copy of the inscription : M. S. Clarissimi omnigenaq. virtute et eruditione, praesertim Poesi ornatissimi equitis Domini Robert! Aitoni, ex antiqua et illustri gente Aitona, ad Castrum KLunadinum apud Scotos, oriundi, qui a Serenissimo R. Jacobo in Cubicula Interiora admissus, in Germaniam ad Imperatorem, Imperiiq. Principes cum libello Regio, Regiae au- thoritatis vindice, Legatus, ac primium Annue, demum Mariae, serenissimis Britaimia- rum Reginis ab epistolis, consiliis et libellis supplicibus, nee non Xenodochio S" Catherine pnefectus. Anima Creatoris Reddita, hie depositis mortalibus exuviis se- cundum Redemptoris adventum expectat. Carolum linquens, repetit Parentem Et valedicens Marise revisit Annam et Aulai decus, alto Olympi Mutat Honore. Obiit Ccelebs in Regio Albaula Hoc devoti gratiq. animi Non sine maximo Honore omnium Testimonium optimo Patruo Luctu et Mcerore, ^tat. suae LXVIII. Jo. Aitonus M L P. Salut Humance M.DCXXXVIII. MUSARUM DECUS HIC, PxTRIAEQ. AtJLAEQ. DoMIQUB ET FORIS EXEMPLAR SED NON IMITABILE HONESTI. 84 SIR ROBERT AYTON. The poems of Sir Robert Ayton, for the first time published together in the Miscellany of the Bannatyne Club, (from which we derive these particulars of the poet's life,) are few in number, but of great merit. He composed no Scottish poems, at least none that have come down to our times. He wrote in English, and was, indeed, one of the first of our countrymen who composed in that lan- guage with any degree of elegance or purity. It is unfortunate that the most of his poems are complimentary verses to the illustrious individuals with whom he was acquainted, and of course characterised only by a strain of conceited and extravagant flattery. Those, however, upon general topics, are conceived in a refined and tender strain of fancy, that reminds us more of the fairy strains of Herrick than any thing else. John Aubrey remarks, " that Sir Robert was one of the best poets of his time," and adds the more important testimony that " 3Ir John Dryden has seen verses of his, some of the best of that age, printed with some other verses." According to Dempster, Ayton was also a writer of verses in Greek and French, as well as in English and Latin. Several of his Latin poems are preserved in the work called, " Delitiae Poetanun Scoto- rum," which was printed in his lifetime (1637) at Amsterdam. One poem by Ayton, entitled, " Inconstancy Reproved," and commencing with the words, " I do confess thou'rt smooth and fair," was esteemed by Burns worthy of being paraphrased into the native dialect of the author ; a process cer- tainly of a very curious nature, as it might have rather been expected that the poet of the eighteenth should have refined upon the poet of the seventeenth cen- tury. It may be safely avowed that the modern poet has not improved upon his predecessor. Perhaps the reader will be less familiar with the following equally beautiful poems by Sir Robert Ayton, than with " Inconstancy Reproved," which, after all, is not ascertained to be his. SONG. What me ns this strangeness now of late, Since time must truth approve? This distance may consist with state It cannot stand with love. 'Tis either cunning or distrust, That may such ways allow ; The first is base, the last unjust; Let neither blemish you. For if you mean to draw me on, There needs not half this art ; And if you mean to have me gone, You overact your part. If kindness cross your wished content, Dismiss me with a frown, I'll give you all the love that's spent, The rest shall be my own. ON WOMAN'S INCONSTANCY. I loved thee once, I'll love no more, Thine be the grief as is the blame ; Thou art not what thou wast before. What reason I should be the samel He thai can love unloved again, Hath better store of love than brain : God send me love my debts to pay, While unthrifts fool their love away. SIR ROBERT AYTON. 85 Nothing could have my love o'erthrown, If thou hadst still continued mine : Tea, if thou hadst remain'd thy own, I might perchance have yet been thine. But thou thy freedom did recall, That if thou might elsewhere enthral; And then how could 1 but disdain A captive's captive to remain ? When new desires had conquered thee, And changed the object of thy will, It had been lethargy in me, Not constancy to love thee still. Yea, it had been a sin to ga And prostitute affection so Since we are taught no prayers to say To such as must to others pray. Yet do thou glory in thy choice, Thy choice of his good fortune boast ; HI neither grieve nor yet rejoice, To see him gain what 1 have lost : The height of my disdain shall be, To laugh at him, to blush for thee ; To love thee still, but go no more, A begging to a beggar's door. THE ANSWER, BY THE AUTHOR, AT THE KING'S MAJESTY'S COMMAND. Thou that loved once, now loves no more, For fear to show more love than brain ; With heresy unhatch'd before, A postasy thou dost maintain. Can he have either brain or love That dost inconstancy approve? A choice well made no change admits, All changes argue after-wits. Say that she had not been the same, Should thou therefore another be ? What thou in her as vice did blame, Can thou take virtue's name in thee? No, thou in this her captive was, And made thee ready by her glass ; Example led revenge astray, When true love should have kept the way. True love has no reflecting end, The object good sets it at rest, And noble breasts will freely lend, Without expecting interest. 'Tis merchants' love, 'tis trade for gain, To barter love for love again : Tis usury, yea, worse than this, For self-idolatry it is. Then let her choice be what it will, Let constancy be thy revenge ; If thou retribute good for ill, / Both grief and shame shall check her change, 86 ROBERT BAILLIE. Thus may'st thou laugh when thou shall see Remorse reclaim her home to thee ; And where thou begg'st of her before, She now sits begging at thy door. We submit that such elegant sentiments as these, expressed in such elegant language, are an honour to their author, to his age, and country. B BAILLIE, ROBERT, one of the most eminent, and perhaps the most moderate, of all the Scottish presbyterian clergy during the time of the civil war, was born at Glasgow, in 1599. His father, Thomas Baillie, citizen, was descended from the Baillies of Lamington ; his mother, Helen Gibson, was of the family of Gibson of Durie ; both of which stocks are distinguished in presbyterian history. Having studied divinity in his native university, Mr Baillie, in 1622, received episcopal orders from Archbishop Law, of Glasgow, and became tutor to the son of the Earl of Eglintoune, by whom he was presented to the parish church of Kilwinning. In 1626 he was admitted a regent at the college of Glasgow, and, on taking his chair, delivered an inaugural oration, De Mente Agente, About this period he ap- pears to have prosecuted the study of the oriental languages, in which he is al- lowed to have attained no mean proficiency. For some years he lived in terms of the strictest intimacy with the noble and pious family of Eglintoune, as also with his ordinary, Archbishop Law, with whom lie kept up an epistolary correspon- dence. Baillie was not only educated and ordained as an episcopalian, but he had imbibed from principal Cameron of Glasgow, the doctrine of passive resist- ance. He appears, however, to have been brought over to opposite riews during the interval between 1630 and J636, which he employed in discussing with his fellow-clergymen the doctrines of Arminianism, and the new ecclesiastical regu- lations introduced into the Scottish church by Archbishop Laud. Hence, in the year 1636, being desired by Archbishop Law to preach at Edinburgh in favour of the Canon and Service-books, he positively refused; writing, however, a re- spectful apology to his lordship. Endeared to the resisting party by this con- duct, he was chosen to represent the presbytery of Irvine in the General Assem- bly of 1638, by which the royal power was braved in the name of the whole nation, and episcopacy formally dissolved. In this meeting, Baillie is said to have behaved with great moderation ; a term, however, which must be under- stood as only comparative, for the expressions used in his letter regarding the matters condemned, are not what would now be considered moderate. In the ensuing year, when it w ( is found necessary to vindicate the proceedings of the Glasgow Assembly with the sword, Baillie entered heartily into the views of his countrymen. He accompanied the army to Dunse Law, in the capacity of preacher to the Earl of Eglintoune's regiment ; and he it was, who has handed down the well known description of that extraordinary camp. " It would have done you good," he remarks in one of his letters, " to have cast your eyes athort our brave and rich hills, as oft as I did, with great contentment and joy ; for I was there among the rest, being chosen preacher by the gentlemen of our shire, who came late with Lord Eglintoune. I furnished to half a dozen of good fellows, muskets and pikes, and to my boy a broad sword. I carried myself, as the fashion was, a sword, and a couple of Dutch pistols at my saddle ; but I pro- mise, for the offence of no man, except a robber in the way ; for it was our part alone to pray and preach for the encouragement of our countrymen, which I did to my power most chearfully." (Letters, vol. 5. p. 174.) He afterwards states, " Our soldiers grew in experience of anus, in courage, and favour, daily ROBERT BAILLIE. 87 Every one encouraged another. The sight of their nobles, and their beloved pastors, daily raised their hearts. The good sermons and prayers, morning and evening, under the roof of heaven, to which their drums did call them for bells ; the remonstrance very freq-ient of the goodness of their cause ; of their conduct hitherto, by a hand clearly divine ; also Leslie's skill, and prudence, and for- tune, made them as resolute for battle as could be wished. We were feared that emulation among our nobles might have done harm, when they should be met in the field; but such was the wisdom and authority of that old, little, crooked soldier, that all, with an incredible submission, from the beginning to the end, gave over themselves to be guided by him, as if he had been great Solyman. Had you lent your ear in the morning, or especially at even, and heard in the tents the sound of some singing psalms, some praying, and some reading Scrip- t'Jre, ye would have been refreshed. True, there was swearing, and cursing, and bra\vling, in some quarters, whereat we were grieved ; but we hoped, if our camp had been a little settled, to have gotten some way for these misorders ; for all of any fashion did regret, and all promised to do their best endeavours for helping all abuses. For myself, I never found my mind in better temper than it was aD that time since I came from home, till my head was again homeward ; for I was as a man who had taken my leave from the world, and was resolved to die in that service without return." This expedition ended in a treaty between the Scottish leaders and their sovereign, in terms of which hostilities ceased for a few months. On the renewal of the insurrectionary war next year, Baillie accom- panied the Scottish army on its march into England, and became the chronicler of its transactions. Towards the end of the year 1640, he was selected by the Scottish leaders as a proper person to go to London, along with other commis- sioners, to prepare charges against Archbishop Laud, for his innovations upon the Scottish church, which were alleged to have been the origin of the war. Ke had, in April, before the expedition, pubBshed a pamphlet, entitled, " Laden- si urn AfToxo > .Tx0/o7j : the Canterburian's Self-conviction ; or an Evident Demon- stration of the avowed Arminianisme, Pcperie. and Tyrannic of that Faction, by their own confessions," which perhaps pointed him out as fit to take a lead in the prosecution of the great Ajitichrist of Scottish presbytery. Of this and al- most all the other proceedings of his public life, he has left a minute account in his letters and journals, which are preserved entire in the archives of the church of Scotland, and in the university of Glasgow, and of which excerpts were pub- lished in 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1775. These reliques of Mr Baillie form val- uable materials of history. Not long after his return to his native country, in 1642, he was appointed joint professor of divinity at Glasgow, along with Mr David Dickson, an equally distinguished, but less moderate divine. It affords some proof of the estimation in which he was now held, that he had the choice of this appointment in all the four universities of Scotland. He performed his duties from this period till the restoration, and at the same time attended all the General Assemblies as a member, except during an interval in 1643-6, when he was absent as a delegate to the Westminster assembly of divines. In this latter capacity, he conducted himself in an unobtrusive manner, but fully concurred in the principles and views of the more prominent men. It is observable from his let- ters, that, with the pardonable earnestness of his age and party, he looked upon toleration as a thing fatal to religion, and strenuously asserted the divine right of the presbyterian church to be established in complete ascendancy and power as a substitute for the church of England. From 1646 to 1649, he discharged his ordinary duties as a theological teacher, without taking a leading part in public affairs. But in the latter year, he was chosen by the church, as the fit- test person to carry its homage to king Charles II. at the Hague, and to invite 88 ROBERT BAILLIE. that youthful monarch to assume the government in Scotland, under the limita- tions and stipulations of the covenant. This duty he executed with a degree of dignity and propriety, which could have been expected from no member of his church, but one, who, like him had spent several years in conducting high diplo- matic affairs in England. Indeed, Mr Baillie appears in every transaction of his life, to have been an accomplished man of the world; and yet retaining, along with habits of expediency, the most perfect sincerity in his religious views. When the necessary introduction of the malignants into the king's service, caused a strong division in the church, in 1651, Baillie, as might have been expected frcm his character and former history, sided with the yielding or Resolutionist party, and soon became its principal leader. On this account he, and many other sincere men, were charged by the Protesting and less worldly party, with a declen- sion from the high principles of the covenant ; a charge to which he, at least, certainly was not liable. After the Restoration, though made Principal of his college through court patronage, he scrupulously refused to accept a bishopric, and did not hesitate to express his dissatisfaction with the re-introduction ol episcopacy. His health now declining, he was visited by the new-made arch- bishop, to whom he thus freely expressed himself: " Mr Andrew," said he, " I will not now call you my lord. King Charles would have made me one of these lords ; but I do not find in the New Testament that Christ has any lords in his house." He considered this form of -religion and ecclesiastical government as " inconsistent with Scripture, contrary to pure and primitive antiquity, and dia- metrically opposed to the true interest of the country." lie died, July, 1662, in the 63d year of his age. Mr Baillie, besides his Letters and Journals, and a variety of controversi.-u pamphlets, suitable to the spirit of the times, was the author or a respectable and learned work, entitled, " Opus Historicum et Chronologicum," which was published in folio at Amsterdam. He was a man of extensive learning under- stood no fewer than thirteen languages, among which weie Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, and Ethiopic, and wrote Latin with almost Augus- tan elegance. He left a large family : one of his daughters, becoming the wife of Walkinshaw of Barrowfield, was, by a strange chance, the ancestress of IMiss Clementina Walkinshaw, well known from her connexion with the history of Prince Charles Stuart and also grandmother to the celebrated Henry Home, bettor known under the judicial designation of Lord Kames. BAILLIE, ROBERT, of Jerviswood, an eminent patriot of the reign of Charles II., was the son of George Baillie of St John's kirk in Lanarkshire, cadet of the ancient family of Baillie of Lamington, who appears to have purchased the estate of Jerviswood, also in Lanarkshire, in the reign of Charles 1., from a family of the name of Livingstone. It is stated by the jr.cobite, Robert Mylne, in the publication called " Fountainhall's Notes," that the first circumstance wlu'ch alienated the mind of Robert Baillie from the government, was his marrying a daughter of Sir Archibald Johnston of Warristoun, who, having borne a conspi- cuous part in the civil war from its beginning, was executed after the Restora- tion. Wliatever be the truth of this allegation, Baillie appears before the year 1676, to have been otherwise allied to the non-conformist party. The incident which first brought him forward into view as a subject of perse- cution, was one of those interferences in behalf of natural justice, where all wiige of consequences is overborne by the exigency of the occasion. During the misgovernment of the Duke of Lauderdale, a wretched profligate of the naire of Carstairs had bargained with Archbishop Sharpe to undertake the business o< an informer upon an uncommonly large scale, having a troop of other informers under him, and enjoying a certain reward for each individual whom he could J. Story. Of JERV1B"WOOD. 1-AINTS3J IK 1600, IN 'EM ROBERT BAIHIE. g9 detect at the conventicles, besides a share of the fines imposed upon them. It may be supposed that an individual who could permit himself to enter upon a profession of this kind, would not be very scrupulous as to the guilt of the per- sons whom he sought to make his prey. He accordingly appears to have, at least in one noted instance, pounced upon an individual who was perfectly in- nocent This was the Rev. Mr Kirkton, a non-conformist minister it is true, but one who had been cautious to keep strictly within the verge of the law. Kirkton was the brother-in-law of 31r Baillie of Jerviswood, by his marriage to the sister of that gentleman, and he is eminent in Scottish literary history for a memoir of the church during his own times, which was of great service in manu- script to the historian Wodrow, and was at length published in 1817. One day in June, 1676, as Mr Kirkton was walking along the High Street of Edinburgh. Carstairs, whose person he did not know, accosted him in a very civil manner, and expressed a desire to speak with him in private. Mr Kirkton, suspecting no evil, followed Contain to a very mean-looking house, near the common prison. Carstairs, who had no warrant to apprehend or detain Mr Kirkton, went out to get one, locking the door upon his victim. 1 The unfortunate cler- gyman then perceived that he was in some danger, and prevaile to himself; and even in his List illness he paid gratuitous professional ts winch were above his strength, and was in danger of suddenly exhausting imself by exertions for others. His liberal disposition was well known to ail mtedwUh public subscriptions; the great extent to which it showed itself n private benefactions is known only to those who were nearly connected with him, and perhaps was fully known only to himself." der^in ' I?* Rlght f " n Urable ' GenCTal SiF > DAVm ' a ^"guMied comman- ds dun. g the wars of the French Revolution, was the second surviving son of ES.%J ^3" hClr> by settlement . f W- ^cond cousin Sir John Uaird, of wbyth, Bart. He entered the army, December 16, 1772, as an ensign in the in I/? J T ^V^" 5 "' at Gibra1 ^ April 1773, and returned toBritain afJrltV H , avin S been Footed to a lieutenancy in 1778, he immediately Irl H -^\Tr ny ^ the 73ld - S re ^ ment then J" st raised by Lord Macleod, w.th which he sailed for India, and arrived at Madras, January 1 7^0 Ins young regiment was here at once ushered into the trying and hazardous scenes ot the war against Hyder Ally, whom the English company had pTokS In iulvT 7 e 80 whil th falth lnt a ^ that " hreate " e <* to overwhelm It o Iv L 1 Ann ? mpany> eXdU5iye f ^ Macleod's regiment, had of iVo 000 n! r" 1 T T' HydCr bUrSt int the Caraatic 3S a" "my f 100 00 men, disc.plined and commanded by French officers, and laid siege fel M Capltal I * ^ " ative Prince friendl y to *e British. Sir Bctor Munro, commander-in-chief of the Company's troops, set out to reliev 25th >, 0f A T St ' ^^^ t0 be j ^ ed 0" the 30t i ;\^ a re i 1 a 1 r ge then m the northern circars under Colonel Baillie. On learning thi! GENERAL SIR DAVID BAIRD. 97 movement, Hyder left Arcot, and threw himself in the way of Colonel Baillie. In order to favour, if possible, the approach of this officer, Sir Hector Munro, on the 5th of September, changed his position a little, and advanced two miles on the Trepassore road, which brought him within a short distance from the enemy. Hyder then detached his brother-in-law, Meer Saib, with 8,000 horse, to attack Colonel Baillie, and afterwards an additional force of 6,000 infantry, 18,000 cavalry, and 12 pieces of cannon, under, his son, the celebrated Tippoo. He at the same time made demonstrations on his front, to keep up the attention of Sir Hector and the main army. Baillie, though commanding no more than 2,000 Sepoys and a few European companies, gained a complete victory over the immense force sent against him, but at the same time sent word to Sir Hector, that, unless provision were made for accomplishing a junction, he must certainly be cut off. The commander-in-chief held a council of war, when it was determined at all hazards to send a reinforcement, for the purpose of achiev- ing the relief of this gallant officer. A small force was selected, consisting principally of the grenadier and infantry companies of Lord Macleod's regiment, which, having received strict injunctions as to the necessity of a secret and ex peditious inarch, set off to wards Colonel Baillie's position, under the command of Colonel Fletcher and Captain Baird. Hyder Ally had secret intelligence of this movement, and sent a detachment to cut it off; but Colonel Fletcher and Captain Baird, having fortunately conceived some suspicion of their guides, sud- denly altered their line of march, and were thereby enabled to gain their point. Hyder was determined that Colonel Baillie, with his friends, should not advance so safely to the main army. He therefore, with the most consummate ability, and under his own personal inspection, prepared an ambuscade at a particular pass through which they would have to march. This part of the road, he had occupied and enfiladed with several batteries of cannon, behind which lay large bodiesof his best foot, while he himself, with almost his whole force, was read) to support the attack. While these real dispositions were made, a cloud of irre- gular cavalry was employed in several motions on the side of Conjeveram, in order to divert the attention of the English camp. The morning of the 10th of September had scarcely dawned, when the silent and expectant enemy perceived Colonel Baillie's little army advancing into the very toils planted to receive it. The ambuscade reserved their fire with admi- rable coolness and self-command, till the unhappy English were in the midst of them. The army marched in column. On a sudden, while in a narrow defile, a battery of twelve guns poured a storm of grape-shot into their right flank The English faced about; another battery immediately opened on their rear. They had no alternative, therefore, but to advance; other batteries met them here likewise, and in less than half an hour, 57 pieces of cannon were so brought to bear on them as to penetrate into every part of the British line. By seven o'clock in the morning, the enemy poured down upon them in thousands, and every Englishman in the army was engaged. Captain Baird, at the head of his grenadiers, fought with the greatest heroism. Surrounded and attacked on all sides by 25,000 cavalry, by 30 regiments of Sepoy infantry, besides Hyder Ally's European corps, and a numerous artillery playing upon them from all quarters within grape-shot distance, yet this heroic column stood firm and un- daunted, alternately facing their enemies on every side of attack. The French officers in Hyder's camp beheld the scene with astonishment, which was increased, when, in the midst of all this tumult and extreme peril, they saw the Briti grenadiers performing their evolutions with as much precision, coolness, and steadiness, as if under the eyes of a commander on a parade. i Colonels Baillie and Fletcher, and N Captain Baird, had only ten pieces of 98 GENERAL SIR DAVID BAIRD. cannon ; brt th => were so excellently served, that they made great havoc nmongst the enemy. At length, after a dubious contest of three hours, (from six in the morning till nine,) victory began to declare for the English; the flower of the 31ysore cavalry, after many bloody repulses, were at length entirely de- feated with great slaughter, and the right Ming, composed of Hyder's best forces, was thrown into disorder, and began to give way. Hyder himself was about to give the orders for retreat, and the i renth officer who directed the artillery began to draw it offl At this moment of exultation and triumph, when British valour was just about to reap that safety which it had so well fought for, thei'e occurred an unlucky accident, which entirely altered the fortune of the day. The tumbrils contain- ing the ammunition suddenly blew up, with two dreadful explosions, in the centre of the British line. The whole face of their column was laid open, and their artillery overturned and destroyed. 1 he destruction of men was great, but the total loss of their ammunition was still more fatal to the survivors. Tippoo Saib, a worthy son of his martial father, instantly saw and seized the moment of advantage, and, without waiting for orders, fell with the utmost rapidity, at the head of the Mogul and Carnatic horse, into the broken square, which had not yet time in any degree to recover its form and order. This attack by the ene- my's cavalry being immediately seconded by the French corps, and by the first line of infantry, determined at once the fr.te of our unfortunate army. After successive prodigies of valour, the brave Sepoys were almost to a man cut to pieces. Colonels Baillie and Fletcher made one more desperate effort ; they rallied the Europeans, and, under the fire of the whole artillery of the enemy, gained a little eminence and formed themselves into a square. In this fonn, did this invincible band, though totally without ammunition, the officers fighting only with their swords, and the soldiers with their bare bayonets, resist and repulse the enemy in thirteen different attacks ; until, at length, incapable of withstand- ing the successive torrents of fresh troops which were continually pouring upon them, they were fairly borne down and trampled upon, many of them still con- tinuing to fight under the very legs of the horses and elephants. Out of about 4,000 Sepoys and 800 Europeans who had commenced this engagement, only about 200 of the latter survived. Colonel Fletcher was among the slain, and Captain Baird had wounds in four places. When he and Colonel Baillie, with other captive officers, were taken before Hyder Ally, the latter gentleman said to the barbarous chief, " Your son will inform you, that you owe the victory to our disaster, rather than to our defeat." Hyder angrily ordered them from his presence, and commanded them instantly to prison. The slaugh- ter among the Mysore troops was very great, amounting, it is said, to three times the whole British army. When Sir Hector Munroe 1'arned the unlnppy fate of his detachment, he found it necessary to retreat to Madras. Captain Baird, with the officers, remained in a dungeon in one of Hyder's forts for three days and a half; he was chained by the leg to another prisoner, as much of the slaughter in Hyder's army was attributed to the grenadiers. At length, in July 1784, he was released, and joined his regiment at Arcot In 1787, he removed with his regiment (now styled the 71st) to Bombay, and re- turned to Madras next year. On the 5th of June 1789, he received the majo- rity of the 71st, and in October obtained leave of absence, and returned to Britain. In 1791, he returned as lieutenant-colonel of the 71st, and joined the army under the marquis Cornwallis. As commander of a brigade of Sepoys, he was present at the attack of a number of Droogs, or hill-forts, and at the siege of Seringapatam, in 1791 and 1792; and likewise at the storming of Tippoo GENERAL SIR DAVID BAIRD. 99 Sultaun's lines and camps in the island of Seringapatam. In 1793, he com- inanded a brigade of Europeans, and was present at the siege of Pondicherry. He received a colonelcy in 1795. In October 1797, he embarked at Ma- dras with his regiment for Europe; iu December, when he arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, he was appointed Brigadier-general, and placed on that staff; in command of a brigade. June 18, 1798, he was appointed Major-gene- ral, and returned to the staff in India. In January 1799, he arrived at Madras, in command of two regiments of foot, together with the drafts of the 28th dra- goons. 3Iay 4, he commanded the storming party at that distinguished action, the assault of Seringapatam ; when, in requital of his brilliant services, he was pre- sented by the army, through the Commander-in-chief, with the state sword of Tippoo Sultaun, and also with a dress-sword from the field-officei-s serving under his immediate command at the assault. The eminent merit of Brigadier-general Baird was now fully known and acknowledged by the government at home. He was therefore, in 1800, ap- pointed to the command of an expedition against Batavia, but which was after- wards sent to Egypt. He landed at Coseir in June, crossed the desert, and, embarking on the Nile, descended to Grand Cairo ; whence he set out for Alex- andria, which he reached a few days before it surrendered to General Hutchison. Next year he led the Egyptian Indian army overland to India, where he was concerned in various military transactions. His services, however, being soon after superseded by Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards the illustrious protector of Europe), he sailed for Britain with his staff, March 1803, and after a tedious voyage, during which he was taken prisoner by a French privateer, but after- wards retaken, he arrived in England in November. Sir David Baird was received at the British court with great distinction. In December, he received the royal permission to wear the Turkish order of the Crescent. In June, 1 804, he received the honour of knighthood ; and on the 1 8th of August following became a knight companion of the Bath. With the increased rank of Lieutenant-general, he commanded an expedition which sailed in October 1805, for the Cape of Good Hope. Landing there, January 6, 1806, he attacked and beat the Dutch army, and on the 18th received the surrender of the colony. Being recalled, he arrived in Britain, April 1807, and was shifted from the colonelcy of the 54th, which he had held for some years, to that of the 24th, and placed on the foreign staff under General Lord Cathcart. He commanded a division at the siege of Copenhagen, where he was twice slightly wounded ; and returned with the army in November. After a short period of service in Ireland, Sir David sailed in command of an annament of 10,000 men for Corunna, where he arrived in November 1808, and formed a junction with the army under General Sir John Moore. He com- iii anded the first division of that army, and in the battle of Corunna, January I 6, 1809, he lost his left arm. By the death of Sir John Moore in this action, Sir David succeeded to the chief command, and had the honour of communicating intelligence of the victory to government. On this occasion, he received for the fourth time in his Jife the thanks of parliament, and, April 13, was created a baronet, with very hon- ourable armorial bearings allusive to the transactions of his life. After tins period, he never asrain appeared in active service. In 1810, he married Preston Campbell, of Ferntower and Lochlane, Perthshire, by whom he left no issue. In 1814, he was promoted to the rank of General, and in 1S19 became governor of Kinsale in Ireland, and in 1827, of Fort George in the north of Scotland. This brave veteran died at 'an advanced age, August 18, 1829, at his seat of Ferntower in Perthshire. His lady, who survived him till 1847, erected 100 WALTER BALCANQUEL, D.D. a monument to his memory on the top of a romantic hill, named, Tom-na- cliaistel, (/. e. the hill of the castle,) in the neighbourhood of Ferntower. BALCANQUEL, WALTER, D.D. an eminent divine of the seventeenth century, was the son of the Hev. Walter Balcanquel, who was a minister of Bdinbwgb for forty-three years, and died in August, 1 (i 1 6. Dr Walter Balcanquel was born at Edinburgh. It has been supposed that he was himself a minister of Edin- burgh ; but probably the writer who makes this statement only mistakes him for his father, who bore the same name. He entered a bachelor of divinity at Pem- broke Hall, Oxford, where, September 8th, 1611, lie was admitted a fellow. He appears to have enjoyed the patronage and friendship of Ling James, and his first preferment was to be one of the royal chaplains. In 1(>17, he became Waster of the Savoy in the Strand, London ; which office, however, he soon after resigned in favour of Mark Antony de Dominis, archbishop of Spalatro, who came to England on account of religion, and became a candidate for the king's favour. Iii 1618, Dr Balcanquel was sent to the celebrated synod of Dort, as v one of the representatives of the church of Scotland. He has given an account of a considerable part of the proceedings of this grand religious council, in a series of letters to Sir Dudley Carleton, which are to be found in " The Golden Remains of the ever memorable Mr John Hales of Eaton, 4to. 1673." In 1621, the Archbishop of Spalatro having resigned the mastership of the Savoy, Dr Balcanquel was re-appointed; and on the 12th of March, 1624, being then doctor of divinity, he was installed Dean of Rochester. George Heriot, at his death, February 12th, 1624, ordained Dr Balcanquel to be one of the three executors of his last will, and to take the principal charge of the establishment of his hospital at Edinburgh. Probably, the experience which he had already acquired in the management of the Savoy Hospital might be the chief cause of his being selected for this important duty. Heriot appointed Dr Balcanquel, by hL> will, " to repair, with all the convenience he can, after my decease, to the town of Edinburgh," in order to conclude with the magistrates about the business of the hospital ; allowing him, for his pains, in addition to the sum of one hundred merks, which he enjoyed as an ordinary executor, one hundred pounds sterling, payable by two equal instalments the first three months after the decease of the testator, and the second at the completion of the hospital Dr Balcanquel is entitled to no small commendation for the able manner in which he discharged this great and onerous trust. The Statutes, which, in terms of the testator's will, were drawn up by him, are dated 1627, and do great credit to his sagacity and practical good sense. 1 They conclude with the following adjuration to the magistrates and olergy of Edinburgh, who were designed in all time coming to be the managers of the hospital ; 'a piece of com- position, calculated, we should think, by its extraordinary solemnity and ini press! veness, to have all the effect which could be expected, from couuecuug the obligations of the trustees with the sanctions of religion : * And now, finally, 1, the unworthy servant of God, Walter B:ilcaviquel, the composer of these Statutes, do operate and charge the consciences of you, the Lord Provost. Magistrates, and Ministry, and Cuuiicil of the city of Edinburgh, and of all those who shall be your suc- cessors, unto the second coming of the Son of (jod, and that by the bowels of our Lord Jesus Christ, who one day will come to judge the quick and the dead, and take a particular account of every one of you, for this particular stewardship, wherewith you are trusted ; by the zeal and honour of our reformed religion, which by this pious work of the founder, is illustrated and vindicated from the calumnies of the adversaries to our holy profession, by that pious respect which you, his fellow-citizens, ought to carry to the pious memory and last will of the religious founder, your worthy citizen, George Heriot. And, lastly, for the clearing if your own consciences, and your own particular accounts in the great day of the Lord, let none of you, who read these presents, nor your successors, who in after ages shall come to read them, offer to frustrate the pious Founder of his holy intention, either by taking, direct- ly or indirectly, from this hospital, any thing which he, in his piety, hath devoted unto it, \>t by altering it, or bestowing it upon any other use, though you shall conceive it to be far ALEXANDER BALFOUR. 101 Dr Balcanquel's next appearance in the public concerns of his native country, was of a less happy character. In 1638, when Charles 1. sent down the Mar- quis of Hamilton to Scotland, to treat with the Covenanters, the Dean of Roches, ter accompanied his grace in the capacity of chaplain. What was his external behaviour on this occasion, we do not know; but it was afterwards surmised by the Covenanters, that he had been deputed by Archbishop Laud, as a spy, at once upon the Marquis, who was suspected of moderation, and the people with whom he was dealing. It is asserted by Sir James Balfour, in his " Memorialls of State," that Dr Balcanquel also communicated intelligence of all that happened In Scotland, to Signor George Con, the Pope's legate, " as some of his inter- cepted letters can beare recorde." Early in the ensuing year, was published an apologetical narrative of the court-proceedings, under the title of " His Majes- ties Large Declaration, concerning the Late Tumults in Scotland," which, by universal and apparently uncontradicted report, was ascribed to the pen of Dr BalcanqueL While this work was received by the friends of the king as a triumphant vindication of his attempts upon the purity of the Scottish churcli, it only excited new indignation in the minds of the outraged people, who soon after appeared in arms at Dunse law, to defend their religious freedom with ibe sword. On the 14th of May, 1C 3 9, at the very time when the armies were about to meet on the borders, Dr Balcanquel, apparently in requital of his exer- tions, was installed Dean of Durham. He had now rendered himself a marked man to the Scottish presbyterians, and accordingly his name is frequently alluded to in their publications as an " incendiary" Under this character he was denounced by the Scottish estates, July 2s), 1641, along with the Earl of Traquair, Sir John Hay, Clerk Register, Sir Robert Spottiswoode, and Maxwell, Bishop of Ross, all of whom were regarded as the principal causes of the war between the kin<>- and his people. In the Canterburian's Self-Conviction, a pamphlet mitten in 1641, by the Rev. Robert Baillie, against Archbishop Laud, he is spoken of in a style of such asperity, as might have convinced him that, in the event of a complete triumph of the presbyterian party, he would share in the proceedings which were now directed against that unhappy prelate. Accordingly, the very next year, when the king could no longer protect his partizans, Dr Balcanquel was forced from his mastership of the Savoy, plundered, sequestered, and obliged to fly from London. Repairing to Oxford, he attached himself to the precarious fortunes of his sovereign, and for several years afterwards, had to shift about from place to place, wherever he could find security for his life. At length, having taken refuge in Chirk Castle, Denbighshire, he died there in a very cold season, on Christmas day, 1645. He was buried next day in the parish church of Chirk, where some years after a splendid monument was erected to his memory by a neighbouring royalist, Sir Thomas Middleton of Chirk Castle. BALFOUR, ALEXANDER, an esteemed miscellaneous writer, was born M 1st, 1767, in the parish of Monikie, Forfarshire. His parents belonged to the Ik-ing fully assured of your goodly rare and zealous }*^ u t ^&^ Father, and the Holy Ghost, three Persons, but one undivided . Essence of 1 for allother their blessings, so in particular for the great chanty < ligious founder, be ascribed, as is most due, all praise, honour, and glory, fit iTis alleged, by traditionary report, that the taste of Dr Balc ^"^ ta^^fflSJf f" ' SSfo^n1^ 0f ofoSenW wSch ifX-vS 'in TCe whidows of the building >.i..,ni^ii hriwp.vwr nffart.\nf onlv the details, an 102 ALEXANDER BALFOUR. humbler rural class. His education was very limited, and he was apprenticed at an early age to a weaver. His first attempts at composition were made when he was twelve years of age. At a somewhat maturer age he contributed verses to a newspaper named the "British Chronicle," to Dr Anderson's "Bee," and to several provincial miscellanies. At twenty-six he became clerk to a manufacturing house in Arbroatb, and married in the following year. From the Arbroath establishment, in which he had for several years been a partner, he removed, in 1814, to Trottick near Dundee, where he formed a connection with a branch of an extensive London bouse. In' the ensuing year, so memorable for calamity in the commercial world, the house in which lie had embarked his fortune was suddenly involved in bankruptcy. Till some better employment should occur to him, Balfour resorted to the pen, which had never been altogether laid aside in his busiest and most prosperous days, and, in 1819, he produced a novel entitled, "Campbell, or the Scottish Probationer," which was received by the public in a favourable manner. While the work was in progress, he accepted of a dependent situation at Balgonie in Fife, the emoluments of which were barely sufficient to maintain a family consisting of a wife, two sons, and three daughters. He was at length induced to remove to Edinburgh, where, in 1818, he obtained employment as a clerk from Mr Blackwood the publisher. Ilis health suffered from constant confinement to the desk, and in June, 1819, he was obliged to relinquish his employment by a threatened attack of paralysis. For ten years after the month of October, he was unable to set his foot upon the ground, and spent his days in a wheel-chair. He was, nevertheless, enabled to devote himself, with unimpaired energy, to literary labour. He edited, in 1819, the poetical works of his deceased friend, Richard Gall, adding a biographical preface ; and contributed various articles of merit, consisting of tales, sketches, and poems, descriptive of Scottish rural life, to Constable's Edinburgh Magazine, of which he continued one of the chief literary supporters till its close, in 1826. In this magazine appeared the poetical series, entitled, " Characters omitted in Crabbe's Parish Register," which was afterwards published in a separate volume. In 1820, he published a volume, under the title of " Contemplation, and other Poems." In 1823 he began to contribute novels to the so-called Minerva Press, his first work being, " The Foundling of Glenthorn, or the Smuggler's Cave," a tale in three volumes. Amidst the pangs of his disorder, Mr. Balfour continued to enjoy such good geneial health, that he is said to have not been absent from his family breakfast-table more than twelve times during the long period often years. He slept regularly, and generally was able to spend twelve or fourteen hours each day in study and composition. His eyesight was as good, and his intellectual powers continued as vigorous as at any period of his life; hut his feelings were morbidly sensitive, and he had little command over their expression. In the year 1827, through the intervention, it is believed, of Mr. Joseph Hume, M.P., who presented a number of Mr Balfour's works lo the premier, Mr Canning, a treasury donation of one hundred pounds was obtained for this unfortunate son of genius. The latest considerable work of Mr Balfour was a novel, entitled, " Highland Mary," in four volumes. It is written with great simplicity and taste, and, as a story, is replete with a mournful pathos. He continued to the last to contribute to the periodical works of the day. lie enjoyed his usual health, till the 1st of September, 1829, when an illness commenced that hurried him to the grave. For some days previous to his death, he was deprived of speech, and communicated with his friends by means of an alphabet which he had occasionally used before. He died, September 12th, 1829, in the sixty-third year of his age. A memoir of Balfour was written by the late Mr Moir, of Musselburgh ("Delta"), and prefixed to a posthumous volume of his remains, published under the title of Weeds and Wi/d/.owers. Silt ANDREW BALFOUR, BART., M.D 103 BALFOUR, (Sir) ANDREW, Bart. M.D. who first introduced the dissection of the human body into Scotland, and that at a very superstitious period ; who pro- jected the first hospital in the country, for the relief of disease and poverty at the public expense ; who was the founder of the botanic gajrden at Edinburgh, and almost the father of the science in Scotland; who planned the royal college of physicians at Edinburgh ; and bequeathed to the public a museum, which at that time would have been an ornament to any university, or any me- tropolis, was the fifth and youngest son of Sir Michael Balfour of Denmilne in Fife, and was born at that place on the 18th of January, 1630. He prosecuted his studies in the university of St Andrews, where he took his degree of A. M. At this period his education was superintended by his brother Sir James Balfour, the famous antiquary, and lion king at arms to Charles I., who was about thirty years older than himself. At college he first discovered his attachment to botany, which in him is said to have led to the study of physic, instead of being, as it generally is, a handmaid to that art. Quitting the university about the year ido.J, he removed to London, where his medical studies were chiefly directed by the celebrated Harvey, by Sir Theodore Mayerne, the distinguished physician of king James 1., and various other eminent practitioners. He afterwards travelled to Blois in France, and remained there for some time, to see the botanic garden of the Duke of Orleans, which was then the best in Europe, and was kept by his countryman Dr Morison. Here he contracted a warm friendship for that great botanist, which continued unimpaired while they lived. From Blois he went to Paris, where, for a long time, he prosecuted his medical studies with great ardour. He completed his education at the university of Caen, from which he received the degrees of bachelor and doctor of physic, on the 20th of September, 1661. Returning to London soon afterwards, Dr Balfour was introduced to Charles II., who named him as the most proper person to attend the young earl of Ro- chester on his continental travels. After an absence of four years, he returned with his pupil in 1G67. During their tour he endeavoured, and at that time not without some appearance of success, to recall that abandoned young noble- man to the paths of virtue, and to inspire him with the love of learning. Ro- chester himself often acknowledged, and to Bishop Burnet, in particular, only three days before his death, how much he was bound to love and honour Dr Bal- four, to whom, next to his parents, he thought he owed more than to all the world. On returning to his native country, Balfour settled at St Andrews as a physi- cian. " He brought with him," says Dr Walker, in his Essays on Natural His- tory, " the best library, especially in medicine and natural history, that had till then appeared in Scotland ; and not only these, but a perfect knowledge of the languages in which they were written ; likewise many unpublished manuscripts of learned men, a series of antique medals, modern medallions, and pictures and busts, to form the painter and the architect ; the remarkable arms, vestments, and ornaments of foreign countries ; numerous mathematical, philosophical, and sur- gical instruments, which he not only possessed, but used ; with operations in sur- gery, till then unknown in this country ; a complete cabinet with all the simples of the materia medica, and new compositions in pharmacy ; and large collections of the fossils," plants, and animals, not only of the foreign countries he traversed, but of the most distant parts of the world," Dr Balfour's merit was too conspicuous to suffer him to remain long at St An- drews. In the year 1670, he removed to Edinburgh, where he immediately came into great practice. Here, among other improvements, he prosecuted the manufacture of paper, and was the means of introducing that valuable art into the country though for many years it remained in a state of complete, or nearly 104 SIR ANDREW BALFOUR, BART., M.D. complete dormancy ; the people deriving stationary articles of all kinds from Holland. Adjoining to his house, he had a small botanic garden, which he fur- nished by the seeds he received from his foreign correspondents ; and in this garden he raised many plants which were then first introduced into Scotland. One of his fellow-labourers in this department was Patrick Murray of Livingston, whom he had initiated into the study of natural history. This young gentleman, who enjoyed an ample fortune, formed at his seat in the country a botanic gar- den, containing one thousand species of plants, which at that period was a very large collection. He traversed the whole of France in quest of the plants o that country ; and on his way to Italy, he prematurely died of a fever. Soon after his death, Dr Balfour transferred his collection from Livingston to Edin- bur-h; and with it, joined to his own, he had the merit of laying the foundation of the public botanic garden. The necessary expense of this new institution was at first defrayed by Dr Balfour, Sir Robert Sibbald, and the Faculty of Ad- vocates. But at length the city allotted a piece of ground near Trinity College Church for a public garden, and out of the revenues of the university, allowed a certain sum for its support. As the first keeper of thjs garden, Dr Balfour selected Mr James Sutherland ; who, in 1684, published a work, entitled, Ilor- tus Edinburgensis. [See SUTHERLAND.] The new institution soon became con- siderable : plants and seeds were sent from Mori son at Oxford, Watts at London, Mai-chant at Paris, Herman at Leyden, and Spottiswood at Tangier. From the last were received many African plants, which flourished in this country. Such efforts as these, by a native Scotsman, occurring at a time when the at- tention of the country seems to have been almost exclusively devoted to contend- ing systems of church-government, are truly grateful in the contemplation. It is only to be lamented, that the spirit which presided over them, was premature in its appearance; it found no genial field to act upon, and it was soon forgotten in the prevailing distraction of the public mind. Sir Andrew Balfour was the morning-star of science in Scotland, but he might almost b said to have set be- fore the approach of day. He was created a baronet by Charles IT., which seems to indicate that, like most men of literary and scientific -character in that age, he maintained a senti- ment of loyalty to the existing dynasty and government, which was fast decaying from the public mind at large. His interest with the ministry, and with the municipality of Edinburgh, seems to have always been considerable, and was uni- formly exerted for the public good, and for the encouragement of merit. Upon his settlement in Edinburgh, he had found the medical art taught in a very loose and irregular manner. In order to place it on a more respectable footing, he planned, with Sir Robert Sibbald, the royal college of physicians ; and of that respectable society his brethren elected him the first president. When the college undertook the publication of a Pftarmacopeeia, the whole ar- rangement of the materia medica was committed to his particular care. For such a task he was eminently qualified by his skill in natural history. This per- formance made its appearance in 1(585 ; and, in the opinion of Dr Cullen, it is superior to any Pharmacopoeia of that era. Not long before his decesise, his desire to promote the science of medicine in his native country, joined to the universal humanity of his disposition, led him to project the foundation of an hospital in Edinburgh. The institution was at first narrow and confined, but it survived to be expanded into full shape, as the royal infirmary, under the care of George Drummond. Sir Andrew died in 1694, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, after a severe conflict with the gout and other painful disorders ; which afforded him an opportunity of display- ing upon the approach of death ; those virtues and that equanimity, which had SIR JAMES BALFOUR. distinguished him during his life. His person, like his mind and manners, was society, polite demeanour. A print of him was executed at Paris ; but no copy is known to exist. His library and museum were the anxious result of fourteen years of travelling, and between twenty and thirty more of correspondence. For their accommoda- tion, he had built an addition to his house when he had nearly arrived at his for- tieth year; but after the building was completed, he found himself so infirm as to be unable to place them in that order which he intended. After his death, liis library, consisting of about three thousand volumes, besides manuscripts, was sold, we suppose, by public auction. There is a printed catalogue still extant. His museum was deposited in the hall which was, till 1829, occupied as the uni- versity library. There it remained many years, useless and neglected ; some parts of it falling to inevitable decay, and other parts being abstracted. "Yet, even after 1750," says Dr Walker, "it still continued a considerable collection, which I have good reason to remember, as it was the sight of it, about that time, that first inspired me with an attachment to natural history. Soon after that period," to pursue a narrative so deeply disgraceful to the age and the institu- tion referred to, " it was dislodged from the hall where it had been long kept ; was thrown aside, and exposed as lumber ; was further and further dilapidated, and at' length almost completely demolished. In the year 1782, out of its ruiiu and rubbish I extracted many pieces still valuable and useful, and placed them here in the best order I could. These, I hope, may remain long, and be consi- dered as so many precious relics of one of the best and greatest men this country has produced." From the account that has been given of Sir Andrew Balfour. every person conversant in natural history or medicine must regret that he never appeared as an author. To his friend, Mr Murray of Livingston, he addressed a series of familiar letters, for the direction of his researches while abroad. These letters, forming the only literary relics of Balfour, were subsequently published by his son, in the year 1700. BALFOUR, (Sir) JAMES, an eminent lawyer and public character of the sixteenth century, was a son of Balfour of Monquhanny, in Fife, a very ancient family. In youth, being designed for the church, he made considerable proficiency, not only in ordinary literature, but in the study of divinity and law ; which were all alike necessary in those times for an ecclesiastic, on account of the mixed character which the age admitted to be assumed by such individuals. Balfour, while still a young man, was so unfortunate as to join with the conspirators who, after assas- sinating Cardinal Beaton, held out the castle of St. Andrews against the governor Arran. He seems, however, not to have been a very cordial partizan of the con- spirators. John Knox, in his own vigorous and plain-spoken manner, styled him the Blasphemous Ba'four, on account of his having refused to communicate along with his reforming associates. Balfour shared the fate of his companions in being sent to the French galleys 7 and was confined in the same vessel along with Knor, from which he escaped in 1550, along with the rest, by the tacit permission of the French government. 2 The following anecdote of Balfour in connexion with Knox-is related by Dr M'Crie. " The galleys returned to Scotland in summer 1548. as near as 1 can collect, and continued for a considerable time on the east coast, to watch for English vessels Kno*s health was now greatly impaired by the severity of his confinement, and he was seized with a tVver, during jWhich his life was despaired of by all in the ship. But even in this state, his forti- 106 SIU JAMES BALFOUR. Balfour seems to have afterwards joined in the proceedings of the Reformers, but only with courtier-like temperance, and without exhibiting much zeal in the Protestant cause. He was preferred to the ecclesiastical appointment of official of Lothian, and afterwards became rector of Fhsk, a parish in 'his native county. In 1563, he was appointed by Queen Mary to be a Lord of Session, the court then being composed partly of churchmen, and partly of laics. In 1564, when the Commissary court was instituted in place of the ecclesiastical tribunal, which had been dissolved at the Reformation, Balfour became one of the four commissaries, with a salary of four hundred merks, while the others had only three hundred. In July, 1565, the Queen extended the further favour of admitting him into her privy council. Balfour was one of those servants of the state, who, being advanced rather 01. account of merit than birth, used at all times to give great offence to the Scottish nobility. It seems to have never been supposed by this haughty class, that there- was the least necessity for ingenious or faithful service in the odi -ials employed by majesty : birth and following were the only qualifications allowed by them to be of any value. Accordingly, it is not surprising to and that the same conspi- racy which overthrew the " kinless " adventurer Rizzio, contemplated the destruc- tion of Hulibiir. He was so fortunate, however, as to escape, and even derived some advantage from the event, being promoted to the office of clerk-register, in room of Mr James Macgill, who was concerned in the conspiracy. He was also about this time made a knight, and appointed to be one of the commissioners for revising, correcting, and publishing the ancient laws and statutes of the kingdom. , In the beginning of the year 1 53 7, Sir James Balfour was appointed gover- nor of .Edinburgh castle. In this important situation, he naturally became an object of great solicitude to the confederate lords, who, in the ensuing May, com- menced a successful rebellion against Queen Mary. It would appear that Sir James was not now more loyal than many other persons \vlio hail experienced the favour of Mary. He is said to have even been the means of throwing into the hands of the confederates that celebrated box of letters, upon which they en- deavoured to ground the proof of her guilt There can be no doubt that he was at this time in the way of receiving high favours from the Earl of Murray, who was the chief man opposed to the dethroned queen. He was, in September, 15o'7, admitted by Murray a lord of his privy council, and made commendator ot the priory of 1'it ten weem ; and in December, a bargain was accomplished, by which he agreed to accept a pension of L.500 and the presidency of the Court of Session, in lieu of the clerk-registry, which 31urray wished to be restored to his friend Macgill. Sir James continued faithful to the party which opposed Queen Mary, till the death of Murray, January, 1569-70, when he was in some measure compelled to revert to the Queen's side, on account of a charge prefer red against him by the succeeding Regent, Lennox, who taxed him with a share in the murder of Darnley. For this accusation no proof was ever adduced, but tude of mind rema ned unsubdued, and he comforted his fellow-prisoners with hopes of re- lease, lo their anxious desponding inquiries, natural to men in their situation, ' If he thought they would ever obtain their liberty,' his uniform answer was, God will deliver us to his glory, even in this life.' While they lay on the coast between Dundee and St An- drews, Mr (afterwards Sir) James Bulfour, who was confined in the same ship, desired him to look at the land and see if he knew it Though at that time very sick, he replied, 'Yes I know it well, for I see the steeple of that place where God first opened my mouth in pub- lic to his glory : and I am fully persuaded, how weak sne>er I now appear, that 1 shall not depart this life till that my tongue shall glorify his godly name in the same place.' This sinking reply Sir James repeated In the presence of many witnesses, a number of years before KIWI returned to Sco'land. and when there was very little prospect of his words be- ing veritied." Life of Knot, 1st edit. t >. 53. SIR JAMES BALFOUR. 107 even allowing Sir James to have been guilty, it will only add another to the list of great men concerned in the transaction, and show the more clearly how neither learning, rank, official dignity, nor any other ennobling qualification, prevented a man in those days from staining his hands with blood. Balfour outlived Lennox, and was serviceable in bringing about the pacification between the King's and Queen's party, under Morton, in 1573. He wo'.'ld appear to have been encouraged by Morton in the task of revising the laws of the country, which he at length completed in a style allowed at that time to be most masterly. Mor- ton afterwards thought proper to revive the charge brought by lyennox against Sir James, who was consequently obliged to retire to France, where he lived for some years. He returned in 1580, and revenged the persecution of Morton, by producing against him, on his trial, a deed to which he had acceded, in com- mon with others of the Scottish nobility, alleging Bothwell's innocence of the King's murder, and recommending him to the Queen as a husband. Sir Jarae* lied before the 14th of January, 1533-4. The Practicks of Scots Law, compiled 'by Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich, president of the Court of Session, continued to be used and consulted in manu- script, both by students and practitioners, till nearly a century after his decease, when it was for the first time supplanted by the Institutes of Lord Stair. Even after that event, it was held as a curious repertory of the old practices of Scottish law, besides fulfilling certain uses not answered by the work of Lord Stair. It k was therefore printed in 1754, by the Rirddimans, along with an accurate bio- graphical preface by Walter Goodnl. The work was of considerable service to Dr Jamieson in his Dictionary of the Scottish language. BALFOUR, (SiR) JAMES, an eminent antiquary, herald, and annalist, was born about the close of the sixteenth century. He was the eldest son of a small Fife laird, Michael Balfour of Denmylne, who derived his descent from James, son of Sir John Balfour of Balgarvy, a cadet J of the ancient and honourable house of Balfour of Balfour in Fife. James Balfour, the ancestor of Sir Michael, had obtained the estate of Denmylne from James II., in the four- teenth year of his reign, which corresponds with 1450-1. Michael Balfour, the father of Sir James, and also of Sir Andrew, whose life has been already com- memorated, was, in the words of Sir Robert Sibbald, " equally distinguished for military bravery and civil prudence." He bore the honourable office of Comp- troller of the Scottish Household, in the reign of Charles I., and in 1630 was knighted, at Holyrood house, by George, Viscount Dupplin, Chancellor of Scot- land, under his Majesty's special warrant. This eminent personage was, by Jean Durham, daughter of James Durham of Pitkerrow, the father of five sons, all of whom attained to distinction in public life, besides nine daughters, who all formed honourable alliances, except two, who died unmarried. He lived to see three hundred of his own descendants ; a number which his youngest son, Sir Andrew, lived to see doubled. Sir Michael Balfour gave his eldest son an education suitable to the extended capacity which he displayed in his earliest years. This education, of which th fruits are apparent in his taste and writings, was accompanied by a thorough initiation into the duties of religion, as then professed on a presbytenan model The genius of the future antiquary was first exhibited in a turn for poetry, which was a favourite study among the scholars of that period, even where there was no particular aptitude to excel in its composition, but for which 1 This branch was ennobled in 1607, in the person of Michael Balfour of Balsarvy, win, having served King James in several embassies to the princ.p.i! courts created Lord Balfour of Burleigh This peerage was attainted in consequence ot the CPU- .-en; of its occupant in the civil war of 1715. 108 SIR JAMES BALFOUR. Sir James Balfour appears to have had a genuine taste. His juvenile proficiency in versification is thus alluded to by the poet Leoch, or Leochieus, in his &tren trCU friend d Servant It thus appears that, in some disgust at the bold measures taken against the government, he had now retired to the royal hunting-palace of Falkland, where and at his seat of Kinnaird, he devoted himself to those studies by which the present may be forgotten in the past His annals, however, show that he still occasionally appeared in public affairs in his capacity of Lord Lion. It is also clear that his political sentiments must have been of no obtrusive character, as he continued in his office during the whole term of the civil war, and was only at last deprived of it by Cromwell. During his rural retirement at Falkland and Kinnaird, he collected many manuscripts relative to heraldry, and wrote many others in his own language, of which some are preserved in the Advocates' Libra- ly, while others were either lost at the capture of Perth (1651), to which town he had conveyed them for safety, or have since been dispersed. Persevering with particular diligence in illustrating the History of Scotland, he had recourse to the ancient charters and diplomas of the kingdom, the archives of monasteries, and registers of cathedral churches, and in his library was a great number of chronicles of monasteries, both originals and the abridgments ; but it is to be deeply regretted that many of these valuable manuscripts fell a prey to the sa- crilegious and illiterate, and were shamefully destroyed by the hands of children, or perished in the flames during the civil wars. A few only were opportunely rescued from destruction by those who were acquainted with their value. The style of these monastic chronicles was, indeed, rude and barbarous ; but they were remarkable for the industry, judgment, and fidelity to truth, with which they were compiled. For some time after the erection of monasteries in this kingdom, these writers were almost the only, and certainly the most respectable observers in literature, as scarcely any other persons preserved in writing the me- mory of the important occurrences of the times. In these registers and chroni- cles were to be found, an accurate record of transactions with foreign powers, whether in forming alliances, contracting marriages of state, or regulating com- merce ; letters and bulls of the holy see ; answers, edicts, and statutes of kings ; church rescripts ; provincial constitutions; acts of parliament ; battles; deaths of eminent persons ; epitaphs and inscriptions ; and sometimes the natural ap- pearances of the seasons ; the prevalent diseases ; miracles and prodigies ; the heresies that sprung up ; with an account of the authors, and their punishments. In short, they committed to writing every important occurrence in church and state, that any question arising in after ages might be settled by their authority, and the unanimous confirmation of their faithful and accurate chronicles. In collecting and preserving these manuscripts, Balfour therefore raised a monument to his memory which the latest posterity must revere. For he did so from a conviction that these old and approved authors were the only guides to the knowledge of facts, as well as to correct evidence, and reasoning on the remote history of Scotland ; and he considered them, not only of signal use to himself, but a valuable treasure to the literature of the country. He therefore persevered throughout life in collecting such manuscripts, without regard to either trouble or expense. The catalogue \vhich he left is still extant, 8 allhough many, as al- r. 8 Memoria Balfouriana, p. 1933. * SIR JAMES BALFOUR. ready mentioned, were lost by the depredations of the English and other causes. He formed with great industry, and at a considerable expense, a library of the most valuable books on every subject, particularly in the branches of Scottish history, antiquities, and heraldry. From these he extracted every assistance they could afford in the pursuit of his inquiries, and for further aid he estab- lished a correspondence with the most respectable living historians, such as Robert Maule, Henry Maule, David Buchanan, Gordon of Straloch, and, as has already been shown, Drummond of Hawthornden, all of whom he regarded through life with the warmest esteem, and with the greatest respect for their talents and accomplishments. He endeavoured to elucidate our history (which was then involved in confu- sion) from the examination of ancient medals, coins, rings, bracelets, and other relics of antiquity, of which he formed a separate collection, as an appendage to his library. Observing also from historians, that the Romans had long been settled in Scotland, and had made desperate attempts to expel our ancestors, both Scots and Picts, he collected the inscriptions which' they had left on cer- tain stone buildings, and transcribed them among his notes. In compiling the work to which he gave the title of Annab, our author was more anxious to sup- ply the deficiencies of other historians, and to bring to light obscure records, than to exhibit a continued and regular history of Scotland. He therefore care- fully extracted, from old manuscripts, the names, dignities, and offices of dis- tinguished public characters, the dates of remarkable transactions, and every other circumstance of importance, and arranged them in separate paragraphs. He was actuated by a generous disposition, to rescue from oblivion and the grave, the memory of illustrious men ; for which purpose he visited all the ca- thedral, and the principal parish churches of the kingdom, and examined their sepulchres and other monuments, from which he copied the epitaphs and inscrip- tions, carefully preserving them in a volume. He deeply interested himself in some laudable attempts to improve the geography of Scotland. The ingenious Timothy Pont traversed the whole kingdom, (an attempt which had not been made before) and from personal surveys made plans and descriptions of the different counties and islands, which he was intending to publish, when carried oft* by a premature death. Sir John Scott of Scotstarvet put these papers into the hands of Straloch, by whom they were published, with corrections and addi- tions, in the descriptions accompanying Bleau's maps. Sir James made also a sur- vey of Fife, his native county, examining particularly ancient monuments, and the genealogies of the principal families. He afterwards compiled a description of the whole kingdom, of which the manuscript was so useful to Bleau, that he dedicated to our author the map of Lome in his Theatrum Scotiae, and embel- lished it with the arms of Balfour. Zealous in the improvement and knowledge of heraldry, he carefully reviewed, not only the public acts and diplomas of nobility, but the contents of ancient edifices, temples, and palaces, shields and sepulchral monuments, When it had become proper, from his years, to allow the Prince of Wales a separate estab- lishment, an inquiry was ordered concerning the revenues of the hereditary princes, as steward or lords marshall of Scotland, in which Balfour appears to have taken part, as we find among his manuscripts the following; "The true present state of the principality of Scotland, with the means how the same may be most conveniently increased and augmented ; with which is joined ane sur- vey, and brief notes from the public registers of the kingdoms, of certain infeft- ments and confirmations given to princes of Scotland ; and by them to their vassals of diverse baronies and lands of the principalitie, since the fifteenth year of the reign of Robert III." ROBERT BALFOUR. 115 In. the history of this country, he displayed his uncommon industry in his numerous collection of manuscripts, in the great assemblage of historical works in his own library, and in his careful inspection of the various manuscripts dis- persed over the kingdom, from which he generally extracted the substance, if he did not wholly transcribe them, forming a general index to such as were useful in Scottish history. He made several abridgments of the Registers of Scone, Cam- buskenneth, and others, and from the works of Major, Bnece, Leslie, and Buchan- an, which, in proper order, formed parts of his chronological works, along with relations of important transactions throughout the world. Besides this, he wrote a remarkably concise yet comprehensive history of the kings of Scotland, from Fergus I. to Charles L. He also intended to have enlarged the annals of the Scottish kings from James I. to the beginning of Charles II., of which he had finished the two first James's, on a more diffuse and extensive scale. In other works, he wrote memoirs ot James III., IV., V., of Queen Mary, and of James VI., and the transactions of Charles I., brought down to his death. In natural history, he wrote an alphabetical list of gems, with descriptions, their names and qualities, and the places where they are produced. Another work upon the same subject, written in Latin, exhibited from various authors, an account or ingenious inventions or frauds, practised in counterfeiting and imitating precious stones. Sir James concluded an industrious, and, it would appear, a most blameless life, in February, 1657, when he must have been about sixty years of age. He had been four times married ; 1st, to Anna Aiton, by whom he had three sons and six daughters, and who died August 26th, 1644; 2nd, to Jean Durham, daughter of the laird of Pitarrow, his own cousin, who died without issue only eleven months subsequent to the date of his first wife's death ; 3d, to Mar- garet Arnot, only daughter of Sir James Arnot of Fernie, by whom he had three sons and three daughters ; 4th, to Janet Auchinleck, daughter of Sir William Auchinleck of Balmanno, by whom he had two daughters. Yet his family is now extinct in the male line. The Annals and Short Passages of State, above alluded to, were, after nearly two centuries of manuscript obscurity, published, in 1824, in 4 volumes 8vo. by Mr James Haig of the Advocates' Library, in which receptacle nearly the whole of the collections of this great antiquary have found a secure resting-place. BALFOUR, ROBERT, a distinguished philosopher of the seventeenth century, was principal of Guyenne college, Bourdeaux, and is mentioned by Morhof as a celebrated commentator on Aristotle. According to Dempster, he was "the Phoenix of his age ; a philosopher profoundly skilled in the Greek and Latin languages ; a mathematician worthy of being compared with the ancients : and to those qualifications he joined a wonderful suavity of manners, and the utmost warmth of affection towards his countrymen." This eminent personage appears to have been one of that numerous class of Scotsmen, who, having gained all their honours in climes more genial to science than Scotland was a few centu- ries ago, are to this day better known abroad than among their own countrymen. According to the fantastic Urquhart, who wrote in the reign of Charles I., " Most of the Scottish nation, never having astricted themselves so much to tl proprieties of words as to the knowledge of things, where there was one precep- tor of languages amongst them, there were above forty professors of philosophy : nay, to so high a pitch did the glory of the Scottish nation attain over all parts of France, and for so long a time continue in that obtained height, by vir- tue of an ascendant the French" conceived the Scots to have above ail nations, ir matter of their subtlety in philosophical disceptations, that there hath not been, ti. of late, for these several ages together, any lord, gentleman, or other, in all that JOHN BALIOL. coantry, who being desirous to have his sou instructed in the principles of phil- osophy, would intrust him to the discipline of any other than a Scottish master ; of whom they were no less proud than Philip was of Aristotle, or Tullius of Cra- tippus. And if it occurred (as very often it did,) that a pretender to a place in any French university, having, in his tenderer years, been subi'erulary to some other kind of schooling, should enter in competition with another aiming at the same charge and dignity, whose learning flowed from a Caledonian source, com- monly the lirst was rejected and the other preferred." It nevertheless appears that Robert Balfour prosecuted the study of philology, as well as that of philosophy, ,\ith considerable success. His edition of Cleomedes, published at Botmleaux, in 1605, " Latitie versa, et perpetuo commentario illustrata," is spoken of in (he highest terms of praise by the erudite Barthius. Other works by Balfour are, " Gelasii Cyziceni Commentarius Actorum Nicaeni Concilii. Koberto Balforeo in- terprete, 1604, folio," " Commentarius R. Balforei in Organum Logicum Aris- totolis, 1616, 4to," and, " R. Balforei Scoti Commentariorum in lib. Arist. do 1'hilosophia, tomus secundus, 1620, 4to." BALIOL, JOHN, king of Scotland, was the son of John de Baliol, of Bernard's Castle in the county of Durham, a man of great opulence, being possessed of thirty knights' fees, (ecjual to 12,000 of modern money.) and who was a steady adherent of Henry III., in all his civil wars. The mother of Baliol was Devor- gilia, one of the three daughters and co-heiresses of Allan, Lord of Galloway, by Margaret, eldest daughter of David, Earl of Huntingdon, brother of Malcolm IV and William the Lion, kings of Scotland. The first of the English family of Baliol was a Norman noble, proprietor of the manors of Baliol, Harcourt, Dam- pat, and Home in France, and who, coming over with the Conqueror, left a son, Guy, whom William Hufus appointed to be Lord of the forest of Teesdale and Marxvood, giving him at the same time the lands of Middleton and Guiseford in Northumberland. Guy was the father of Bernard, who built the strong castle on the Tees, called from him Bernard's Castle. Eustace, son of this noble, was the father of Hugh, who was the father of John de Baliol, 1 the father of the king of Scotland. 1 John de Baliol has distinguished himself in English literary history, by founding one of the colleges of Oxford, which still bears his name. As this in.stitution is connected in more -a\* than one with Scotland, the following account of its foundation, from Chalmers' i i i - toiy of Oxford, may be read with interest. " The wealth and political consequence of John de Biiliul were dignified by a love of learning, and a benevolence of disposition, which, about the year 1263 (or 1268, as Wood thinks,) induced him to maintain certain poor scln - lar* of Oxford, in number sixteen, by exhibitions, perhaps with a view to some more per- manent establishment, when he should have leisure to mature a plan for that purpose. Oil auuuiaia viuuiu in an piuvauiijiy nave ccaseu, nad not his lady been persuaded to fulfil his intention in the most honourable manner, by taking upon herself the future maintenance of them. * * * * The first step which the Lady Devorgilla took, in providing for the scholars, was to have a house in Horsemonj;er Lane, afterwards called Canditch (from Candida Fossa) in St Mary Magdalene's parish, and on the site where the present college stands ; and being supported in his design by her hus- band's executors, continued the provision which he allotted. In 1282, she gave them statutes under her seal, and appointed Hugh de Hartipoll and William de Menyle as procurators or governors of her scholars. In 1284, the Lady Devornilla purchased a tenement of a citizen of Oxford, called Mary's Hall, as a perpetual settlement for the principal and scholar of the House of Baliol. This edifice, after receiving suitable repair; and additions, was called New Baliol Hall, and their former residence then began to re- reive the name of Old Baliol Hall. The same year, she made over certain lands in tin Vge were at fust small, yielding only eight-pence ;wr week to each scholar, or twenty -seven JOHN BALIQL. 117 The circumstances which led to the appearance of John Baliol in Scottish his- tory, may be thus briefly narrated. By the death of Alexander the third, the cro-.vn of Scotland devolved on the 31aiden of Norway, Marg;iret, the only child of Alexander's daughter, late Queen of Norway. As she was only three years of age, and residing in foreign parts, the convention of estates made choice of six noblemen to be regents of the kingdom during her absence or minority ; but dissensions soon arising among them, Eric, king of Norway, interposed, and' sent plenipotentiaries to treat with Edward king of England, concerning the atihirs of the infant Queen and her kingdom. Edward had already formed a scheme for uniting England and Scotland, by the marriage of his eldest son with Mar- garet, and, accordingly, after holding conferences at Salisbury, he sent an em- bassy to the parliament of Scotland, on the 18th of July, 1290, with full powers to treat of this projected alliance. The views of Edward were cheerfully met by the parliament of Scotland : a treaty was drawn out honourable to both parties, in which to guard against any danger that might arise from so strict an alli- ance with such a powerful and ambitious neighbour the freedom and indepen- dency of Scotland were fully acknowledged and secured; and commissioners were despatched to Norway to conduct the young Queen into her dominions. But this fair hope of lasting peace and union was at once overthrown by the death of the princess on her passage to Britain ; and the crown of Scotland be- came a bone of contention between various competitors, the chief of whom were John Baliol, lord of Galloway, Robert Bruce, lord of Annandale, and John Has- tings, lord of Abergavenny. In order to understand the grounds of their seve- ral claims, it will be necessary to trace briefly their genealogy. On the death of the Maiden of Norway, Alexander's grandchild, the crown of Scotland devolved upon the posterity of David, earl of Huntington, younger bro- ther, as already mentioned, of the kings Malcolm and William. David left three daughters, Margaret, Isabella, and Ada. Margaret, the eldest daughter, married Allan, lord of Galloway, by whom she had an only daughter, Devorgilla, married to John Baliol, by whom she had John Baliol, the subject of this article, who, therefore, was great-grandson to David Earl of Huntington, by his eldest daugh- ter. Isabella, the second daughter of David, married Robert Bruce, by whom she had Robert Bruce, the competitor who, therefore, was grandson to the Earl of Huntington, by his second daughter. Ada, youngest daughter of David, married John Hastings, by whom she had John Hastings who, therefore, was grandson to David, by his third daughter. Hastings could have no claim to the crown, while the posterity of David's elder daughters were in being ; but he in- sisted that the kingdom should be divided into three parts, and that he should inherit one of them. As, however, the kingdom was declared indivisible, his pretensions were excluded, and the difficulty of the question lay between the two great competitors Baliol and Bruce, whether the more remote by one degree, descended from the eldest daughter, or the nearer by one degree, descended from the second daughter, had the better title ? The divided state of the national mind as to the succession presented a fa- vourable opportunity to the ambitious monarch of England for executing a design which he had long cherished against the independence of Scotland, by renewing the unfounded claim of the feudal superiority of England over it. It has been pounds nine shillings and fourpence for the whole per annum, which was soon found insuf- ficient. A number of benefactors, however, promoted the purposes of^the founder, by en- riching the establishment with gifts of land, money, and church-livings." Mr Chalmers a" amongst other con grandson of the founder. The seal attached by ;i portrait of her. She died in JOHN BALIOL. generally supposed, that he was chosen arbitrator by the regents and states of Scotland in the competition for the crown ; but it appears that his interference was solicited by a few only of the Scottish nobles who were in his own interest. Assuming this, however, as the call of the nation, and collecting an army to sup- port his iniquitous pretensions, he requested the nobility and clergy of Scotland, and the competitors for the crown, to meet him at Norham within the English territories. There, after many professions of good-will and affection to Scot- land, he claimed a right of Lord Paramount over it, and required that this right should be immediately recognized. The Scots were struck with amazement at this unexpected demand ; but, feeling themselves entirely in his power, could only request time for the consideration of his claim. Another meeting was fixed upon ; and during the interval, he employed every method to strengthen his party in Scotland, and by threats and promises to bring as many as possible to acknowledge his superiority. His purpose was greatly forwarded by the mu- tual distrusts and jealousies that existed among the Scots, and by the time-serv- ing ambition of the competitors, who were now multiplied to the number of thir- teen some, probably, stirred up to perplex the question, and others, perhaps, prompted by vanity. On the day appointed (2d June, 1291) in a plain opposite to the castle of Norham, the superiority of the crown of England over the crown of Scotland was fully acknowledged by all the competitors for the latter, as well as by many barons and prelates ; and thus Edward gained the object on which his heart had been long set, by conduct disgraceful to himself as it was to those who had the government and guardianship of Scotland in keeping. All the royal castles and places of strength in the country were put into his hands, under the security that he should make full restitution in two months from the date of his award, and with the ostensible reason that he might have a kingdom to bestow on the person to whom it should be adjudged. Having thus obtained his wish, he proceeded to take some steps towards determining the claim of the competi- tors. Commissioners were appointed to meet at Berwick ; and after various deliberations, the crown was finally adjudged to John Baliol, on the 19th of \oveinber, 1292, and next day Baliol swore fealty to Edward at Norham. Baliol was crowned at Scone shortly after ; but, that he might not forget. his dependancy, Edward recalled him into England, immediately after his coronation, and made him renew his homage and fealty at Newcastle. He was soon loaded with fresh indignities. In the course of a year he received no fewer than six citations to appear before Edward in the English parliament, to answer private and unimportant complaints which were preferred against him by hie subjects. Although led by an insidious policy, and his own ambition, into the most humiliating concessions, Baliol seems not to have been destitute of spirit or to have received without resentment the indignities laid upon him. In one of the causes before the parliament of England, being asked for his defence " I am king of Scotland," he said, " I dare not make answer //ere without the advice of my people." " What means this refusal," said Edward, " you are my liegeman ; you have done homage to me ; you are here in consequence of my summons!" Baliol replied with firmness, " In matters which respect my king- dom. I neither dare nor shall answer in this place, without the advice of my people." Edward requested that he would ask a delay for the consideration of the question ; but Baliol, perceiving that his so doing would be construed into an acknowledgment of the jurisdiction of the English parliament, refused. In the meantime, a war breaking out between France and England, Baliol seized upon it as a favourable opportunity for shaking off a yoke that had be- come intolerable. He negotiated a treaty with Philip, the French king, on the 23d October, 1295, by which it was agreed to assist one another against their JOHN BALIOL. jjg common enemy the king of England, and not to conclude any separate peace. At the same time, Baliol solemnly renounced his allegiance to Edward, and re- ceived from the Pope an absolution from the oaths of fealty which he had sworn. The grounds of his renunciation were these That Edward had wantonly and upon slight suggestions summoned him to his courts ; that he had seized his English estates, his goods, and the goods of his subjects ; that he had forcibly carried oft' and still retained certain natives of Scotland ; and that, when remon- strances were made, instead of redressing, he had continually aggravated these injuries. Edward is said to have received BalioPs renunciation with more con- tempt than anger. " The foolish traitor," he exclaimed, " since he will not come to us, we will go to him." He accordingly raised a large army ; and, sending his brother into France, resolved himself, in person, to make a total con- quest of Scotland. While Edward advanced towards Berwick, a small army of Scots broke into Northumberland and Cumberland, and plundered the country. The castle ot Werk was taken ; and a thousand men, whom Ed \vard sent to preserve it, falling into an ambush, were slain. An English squadron, also, which blocked up Ber- wick by sea, was defeated, and sixteen of their ships sunk. But these partial successes were followed by fatal losses. The king of England was a brave and skilful general ; he conducted a powerful army against a weak and dispirited nation, headed by an unpopular prince, and distracted by party animosities. His eventual success was, therefore, as complete as might have been anticipated. He crossed the Tweed at Coldstream, took Berwick, and put all the garrison and inhabitants to the sword. The castle of Roxburgh was delivered into his hands ; and he hastened Warenne Earl of Surrey forward to besiege Dunbar. \Varenne was there met by the Scots army, who, abandoning the advantage of their situation, poured down tumultuously on the English, and were repulsed with terrible slaughter. After this defeat, the castles of Dunbar, Edinburgh, and Stirling, fell into Edward's hands, and he was soon in possession of the whole of the south of Scotland. Baliol, who had retired beyond the river Tay, with the shattered remains of his army, despairing of making any effectual resistance, sent messengers to im- plore the mercy of Edward. The haughty Plantagenet communicated the hard terms upon which alone he might hope for what he, asked ; namely, an unqua- lified acknowledgment of his " unjust and wicked rebellion," and an unconditiona surrender of himself and his kingdom into the hands of his master. Ba whose life presents a strange variety of magnanimous efforts and humihi self-abasements, consented to these conditions ; and the ceremony of his dation accordingly took place, July 2, 1296, in the church-yard of Straca a village near Montrose. Led by force and in fear of his life, into the pre of the Bishop of Durham and the English nobles, mounted on a sorry fa was first commanded to dismount; and his treason being proclaimed, they pro ceeded to strip him of his royal ornaments. The crown was snatche head ; the ermine torn from his mantle, the sceptre wrested from hi i hand, ai every thing removed from him belonging to the state and dignity ot a K^ Dressed only in his shirt and drawers, and holding a white rod in I after the fashion of penitents, he confessed that, by evil and false c through his own simplicity, he had grievously offended his liege 1 lated all the late transactions, and acknowledged himself to be desem<% de prived of his kingdom. He then absolved his people from ^allegiance, am, signed a deed resigning his sovereignty over them into the ward, giving his eldest son as a hostage for his fidelity. The acknowledgment of an English paramountcy has at all tnnes been sc 120 JOHN BALIOL. agree.able to tlie Scottish people, and the ciraimstauces of (his renunciation of the kingdom are so extremely humiliating to national pride, that John Baliol nns been ever since held in hatred and contempt, and is scarcely allowed a place in the ordinary rolls of the Scottish monarchs. It must be said, however, in his defence, that his first acknowledgment of the paramountcy was no more than what his rival Bruce and the greater part of the nobles of the kingdom were also guilty of; while he is certainly entitled to some credit for his efforts to shake off" the yoke, however inadequate his means were for doing so, or whatever ill fortune he experienced in the attempt. In his deposition, notwith- standing some equivocal circumstiinces in his subsequent history, he must be looked upon as only the victim of an overwhelming force. The history of John Baliol after his deposition is not in general treated with much minuteness by the Scottish historians, all of whom seem to have wished to close their eyes as much as possible to the whole affair of the resignation, and endeavoured to forget that the principal personage concerned in it had ever been king of Scotland. This history, however, is curious. The discrowned monarch and his son were immediately transmitted, along with the stone of Scone, the records of the kingdom, and all other memorials of the national in- dependence to London, where the two unfortunate princes were committed to a kind of honourable captivity in the Tower. Though the country was reduced by the English army, several insurrections which broke out in the subsequent year showed that the hearts of the people were as yet unsubdued. These insur- gents invariably rose in the name of the deposed king John, and avowed a resolution to submit to no other authority. It is also worth remarking, as a circumstance favourable to the claims and character of Baliol, that he was still acknowledged by the Pope, the King of France, and other continental princes. When Wallace rose to unite all the discontented spirits of tlte kingdom in one grand effort against the English yoke, he avowed himself as only the governor of the kingdom in name of King John, and there is a charter still extant, to which the hero appended the seal of Baliol, which seems, by some dinner, to have fallen into his hands. The illustrious knight of Elderslie, throughout the whole of his career, acknowledged no other sovereign than Baliol; and, what is perhaps more remarkable, the father of Robert Bruce, who had formerly asserted a superior title to the crown, and whose son afterwards displaced the Baliol dynasty, appeared in arms against Edward in favour of King John, and in his name concluded several truces with the English officers. There is extant a deed executed on the 13th of November, 1299, by William, Bishop of St Andrews, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, and John Comyn the younger, styling themselves guardians of the kingdom of Scotland ; in which they petition King Edward for a cessation of hostilities, in order, as they afterwards expressed themselves, that they might live as peaceable subjects under their sovereign King John. There is, however, no reason to suppose, that these proceedings were in ac- cordance with any secret instructions from Baliol, who, if not glad to get quit of his uneasy sovereignty, at the time he resigned it, at least seems to have afterwards entertained no wish for its recovery. A considerable time be- fore his insurgent representatives made the above declaration in his behalf, he is found executing a deed of the following tenor : " In the name of God, Amen. In the year 1298, on the 1st of April, in the house of the reverend father, Anthony, Bishop of Durham, without London. The said Bishop discoursing of the state and condition of the kingdom of Scotland, and of the inhabitants of the said kingdom, before the noble lord John Baliol : the said John, of his own proper motion, in the presence of us, the Notary, and the subscribing witnesses, amongst other things, said and delivered in the French tongue to this effect, that EDWARD BALIOL. 121 is to say, that while he, the said realm of Scotland, as King and Lord thereof, held and governed, he had found in the people of the said kingdom so much malice, fraud, treason, and deceit, that, for their malignity, wickedness, treachery, and other detestable facts, and for that, as he had thoroughly understood, they had, while their prince, contrived to poison him, it was his intention never to go or enter into the said kingdom of Scotland for the future, or with the said king- dom or its concerns, either by himself or others, to intermeddle, nor for the rea- sons aforesaid, and many others, to have any thing to do with the Scots. At the same time, the said John desired the said Bishop of Durham, that he would acquaint the most magnificent prince, and his Lord, Edward, the most illustrious king of England, with his intention, will, and firm resolution in this respect. This act was signed and sealed by the public notary, in the presence of the Bishop of Durham aforesaid, and of Ralph de Sandwich, constable of the Tower of London, and others, who heard this discourse." 1 We regret for the honour of Scotland, that, excepting the date of this shame- fid libel, there is no other reason for supposing it to be dictated in an insincere spirit Baliol now appears to have really entertained no higher wish than to regain his personal liberty, and be permitted to spend the rest of his days in retirement Accordingly, having at last convinced King Edward of his sinceri- ty, he and his son were delivered, on the 20th of July, 1299, to the Pope's le- gfite, the Bishop of Vicenza, by whom they were transported to Erance. The unfortunate Baliol lived there upon his ample estates, till the year 1314, when he died at his seat of Castle Galliard, aged about fifty-five years. Though thus by no means advanced in life, he is said to have been afflicted with many of the infirmities of old age, among which was an entire deprivation of sight. BALIOL, EDWARD. King John Baliol had two sons, Edward and Henry. The former seems entitled to some notice in this work, on account of his vigo- rous, though eventually unsuccessful attempt to regain the crown lost by his fa- ther. When King John entered into the treaty with the King of France, in 1295, it was stipulated in the first article that his son Edward should marry the daughter of Charles of Valois, niece to the French monarch, receiving writh her twenty-five thousand livres de Tournois current money, and assigning to her, as a dowry, one thousand five hundred pounds sterling of yearly rent, of which one thousand should be paid out of King John's lands of Baliol, Dampier, Helicourt, and de Hornay, in France, and five hundred out of those of Lanark, Cadiou, Cunningham, 2 Haddington, and the Castle of Dundee, in Scotland. This young prince accompanied his father in his captivity in the Tower, and was subse- quently carried with him to France. After the death of John Baliol, Edward quietly succeeded to the French family estates, upon which he lived unno- ticed till 1324, when Edward II. commanded that he should be brought over to England, apparently for the purpose of being held up as a rival to Robert Bruce. Whether he now visited England or not is uncertain ; but would rather appear that he did not, as, in 1326, he was invited by Edward I for the same purpose. At this time, the English monarch was endeavouring t secure a peace with the King of Scots, but at the same time held himself pre pared for war by mustering his barons at Newcastle. He seems to have I that a threat of taking Baliol under his patronage was apt to quicke sires of the Scots for an accommodation. Nevertheless, in the summ i Prynne's Collections, iii. 665. T 2 '. J, hn Baliol is known to have possessed in Cunningham the foil *^ " ^^ Noddcsdale, Southannan. Dairy, Giffin, Cumsheuch, Dreghorn, %******"" marnock, together with Bondinton and Hartshaw ; tei.d,n in alHo about j^ * of valued rent, or about L15,000 real rent at present."- Robertson 5 Ayr* i. Q 122 EDWARD BALIOL. rear, the Scots made a bold and successful incursion into England, under Ran- dolph and Douglas, and King Edward was obliged, April 1328, to consent to the treaty of Northampton, which acknowledged at once the independency of the Scottish crown, and the right of Robert Bruce to wear it. No more is heard of Edward Baliol, till after the death of Bruce, when he was tempted by the apparent weakness of Scotland under the minority of David II. to attempt the recovery of his birth-right. Two English barons, Henry de Beaumont and Thomas Lord Wake, claimed certain estates in Scotland, which had been declared their property by the treaty of Northampton ; Randolph, the Scot- tish regent, distrusting the sincerity of the English in regard to other articles of this treaty, refused to restore those estates ; and the two barons accord- ingly joined with Baliol in his design. That the English king might not be supposed accessory to so gross a breach of the treaty, he issued a proclama- tion against their expedition ; but they easily contrived to ship four hundred men at arms and three thousand infantry at Holderness, all of whom were safely landed on the coast of Fife, July 31, 1332. Only eleven days before this event, the Scottish people had been bereft of their brave regent, Randolph Earl of Moray, who was almost the last of those worthies by whom the kingdom of Bruce had been won and maintained. The regency fell into the hands of Don- ald, Earl of Mar, in every respect a feebler man. Baliol, having beat back some forces which opposed his landing, moved forward to Forteviot, near Perth ; where the Earl of Mar appeared with an army to dispute his farther progress. As the Scottish forces were much superior in number and position to the English, Baliol found himself in a situation of great jeopardy, and would willingly have re- treated to his ships, had that been possible. Finding, however, no other re- source than to fight, he led his forces at midnight across the Erne, surprised the Scottish camp in a state of the most disgraceful negligence, and put the whole to the route. This action, fought on the 1 2th of August, was called the battle of Dupplin. The conqueror entered Perth, and for some time found no resistance to his assumed authority. On the 24th of September, he was solemnly crowned at Scone. The friends of the line of Bruce, though unable to offer a formal opposition, appointed Andrew Moray of Both well to be regent in the room of the Earl of Mar, who had fallen at Dupplin. At Roxburgh, on the 23rd of November, Bab'ol solemnly acknowledged Edward of England for his liege lord, and surrendered to him the town and castle of Berwick, " on account of the great honour and emoluments which he had procured through the good will of the English king, and the powerful and acceptable aid contributed by his peo- ple." The two princes also engaged on this occasion to aid each other in all their respective wars. Many of the Scottish chiefs now submitted to Baliol, and it does not appear improbable that he might have altogether retrieved a king- dom which was certainly his by the laws of hei-editary juccession. But on the 1 5th of December, the adherents of the opposite dynasty surprised him in his turn at Annan, overpowered his host, and having slain his brother Henry, and many other distinguished men, obliged him to fly, almost naked, and with hardly a single attendant, to England, liis subsequent efforts, though not so easily counteracted, were of the same desultory character. He returned into Scotland in Marsh, and lay for some time at Roxburgh, with a small force. In May, 1333, he joined forces with King Edward, and reduced the town of Berwick. The Scottish regent being overthrown at Halidon Hill, July li), for a time all resistance to the claims of Baliol ceased. In a parliament held at Edinburgh in February, he ratified the fonner treaty with King Edward, and soon after sur- rendered to that monarch the whole of the counties on the frontier, together with the province of Lothian, as part of the kingdom of England. His power, JOHN BALLANTYNE. 123 however, was solely supported by foreign influence, and, upon the rise of a few of the opposite hostile barons, in November, 1334, he again fled to England. In July, 1335, Edward III. enabled him to return under the protection of an army. But, notwithstanding the personal presence and exertions of no less a warrior than the victor of Cressy, the Scots never could altogether be brought under the sway of this vassal king. For two or three yean, Edward Balioi held a nominal sway at Perth, while the greater part of the country was in a state of rebellion against him. The regent Andrew Moray, dying in July, 1338, was succeeded by Robert Stewart, the grandson of Bruce, and nephew of David II. who having threatened to besiege Balioi in Perth, obliged him to retreat once more to England. The greater part of the country speedily fell under the do- minion of the regent, nor was Edward III. now able to retrieve it, being fully engaged in his French wars. The Scots having made an incursion, in 1344, into England, Balioi, with the forces of the northern counties, was appointed to oppose them. Two years after this period, when the fatal battle of Durham, and the capture of David II. had again reduced the strength of Scotland, Balioi raised an insurrection in Galloway, where his family connections gave him great in- fluence, and speedily penetrated to the central parts of the kingdom. He gained, however, no permanent footing. For some years after this period, Scotland maintained a noble struggle, under its regent Robert Stewart, against both the pretensions of this adventurer, and the power of the King of England, till at length, in 1355-6, wearied out with an unavailing contest, and feeling the ap- proach of old age, Balioi resigned all his claims into the hands of Edward III. for the consideration of five thousand merks, and a yearly pension of two thou- sand pounds. After this surrender, which was transacted at Roxburgh, and included his personal estates, as well as his kingdom, this unfortunate prince retired to England. " The fate of Edward Baliol," says Lord Hailes, " was singular. In his invasion of Scotland during the minority of David Bruce, he displayed a bold spirit of enterprise, and a courage superior to all difficulties. By the victory at Dupplin, he won a crown ; some few weeks after, he was sur- prised at Annan and lost it The overthrow of the Scots at Halidon, to which he signally contributed, availed not to his re-establishment Year after year, he saw his partisans fall away, and range themselves under the banner of his com- petitor. He became the pensioner of Edward III. and the tool of his policy, assumed or laid aside at pleasure : and, at last, by his surrender at Roxburgh, he did what in him lay to entail the calamities of war upon the Scottish nation, a nation already miserable through the consequences of a regal succession dis- puted for threescore years. The remainder of his days was spent in obscurity ; and the historians of that kingdom where he once reigned, know not the time of his death." It may further be mentioned, that neither these historians nor the Scottish people at large, ever acknowledged Edward Baliol as one of the line of Scottish monarchs. The right of the family of Bruce, though inferior in a hereditary point of view, having been confirmed by parliament on account of the merit of King Robert, this shadowy intruder, though occasionally dominant through the sword, could never be considered the legitimate monarch, more especially as he degraded himself and his country by a professed surrender ot its independence, and even of a part of its territory, to a foreign enemy, died childless, and, it would also appear, unmarried, in 1363, when h have been advanced to at least the age of seventy. BALLANTYNE, JOHN. Of all the remarkable men, by whom tl me, in its various orthographical appearances, has been borne, not the least worthy of no- tice is John Ballantyne, who died on the 16th of June, 1831, about the age of ( r rty-five years. This gentleman was the son of a merchant at Kelso, where 1 124 JOHN BALLENTYNE (OK BELLENDEN). 1 - waa born and educated. In his youth, he displayed such an extraordinary quick- ness of mind, as sufficiently betokened the general ability by which he was to be distinguished in after life. While still a young man, his mind was turned to literary concerns by the establishment of a provincial newspaper, the Kelso Mail, which was begun by his elder brother J;nnes. The distinction acquired by his brother in consequence of some improvements in printing, by which there issued from a Scottish provincial press a series of books rivalling, in elegance and accurate taste, the productions of a I3ensley or a Baskerville, caused the removal of both to Edinburgh about the beginning of the present century. But the active intellect of John Ballantyne was not to be confined to the dusky shades of the printing-house. He embarked largely in the bookselling trade, and subsequently in the profession of an auctioneer of works of art, libraries, &c. The connection which he and his brother had established at Kelse with Sir Walter Scott, whose Border Minstrelsy was printed by them, continued in this more extensive scene, and accordingly during the earlier and more interesting years of the career of the author of Waverley, John Ballantyne acted as the coiiii- d.int of that mysterious writer, and managed all the business of the communication of his works to the public. Some of these works were published by John Ballan- tyne, who also issued two different periodical works, written chiefly by Sir Wal- ter Scott, entitled respectively the Visionary and the Sale-room, of which the 1 itter had a reference to one branch of 31r Ballantyne's trade. It is also wor- thy of notice, that the large edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, which appeared under the name of Mr Henry Weber as editor, and which, we may pre- sume to say, reflects no inconsiderable credit upon the Scottisli press, was an en- enterprise undertaken at the suggestion and risk of this spirited publisher. Mr Ballantyne himself made one incursion into the field of letters : he was the author of a tolerably sprightly novel in two thin duodecimos, styled, " The Widow's Lodgings," which reached a second edition, and by which, as he used to boast in a jocular manner, he made no less a sum than thirty pounds ! It was not, however, as an author that Mr Ballantyne chiefly shone- his forte was story-telling. As a co?Ueur, he was allowed to be unrivalled by any known contemporary. Possessing an infinite fund of ludicrous and charac- teristic anecdote, which he could set oft' with a humour endless in the variety of its shades and tones, he was entirely one of those beings who seem to have been designed by nature for the task, now abrogated, of enlivening the formalities and alleviating the cares of a court : he was Yorick revived. After pursuing a la- borious and successful business for several years, declining health obliged him to travel upon the continent, and finally to retire to a seat in the neighbourhood of Melrose. He had been married, at an early age, to Miss Parker, a beautiful young lady, a relative of I)r Rutherford, author of the View of Ancient His- tory and other esteemed works. This union was not blessed with any children. In his Melrose rustication, he commenced the publication of a large and beautiful dition of the British Novelists, as an easy occupation to divert the languor of lines*, and fill up those vacancies in time, which were apt to contrast disagree- .ibly with the former habits of busy life. The works of the various novelists vvere here amassed into large volumes, to which Sir Walter Scott furnished bio- graphical prefaces. But the trial was brief. While flattering himself with the hope that his frame was invigorated by change of air and exercise, death stepped in, and reft the world of as joyous a spirit as ever brightened its sphere. The Novelist's Library was afterwards completed by the friendly attention of Sir Wal- ter Scott BALLENTYNE, (or BKLLKNDKN,) JOHN, otherwise spelt Ballanden and Bal- lentyn an eminent poet of the reign of James V., and the translator of Boece's JOHN BALLENTYNE (OR BELLENDEN). 125 Latin History, and of the first five books of Livy, into the vernacular language of his time, was a native of Lothian, and appears to have been born towards the close of the 1 5th century. He studied at the university of St Andrews, where his name is thus entered in the records : " 1508, Jo. Balletyn nac. Lav [doniai}." It is probable that he remained there for several years, which was necessary before he could be laureated. His education was afterwards completed at the univer- sity of Paris, where he took the degree of Doctor of Divinity ; and as has been remarked by his biographer, {Works of Bellenden, I., xxxvii,] " the effects of his residence upon the continent may be traced both in his idiom and language." He returned to Scotland during the minority of James V., and became attach- ed to the establishment of that monarch as " Clerk of his Comptis." This ap- pears from " the Proheme of the Cosmographe," prefixed to his translation of Boece, in which he says : And first occurrit (o my remembering, How that 1 wes in service with the king ; But to his grace in yens teiiderest, Clerk of his compts, thoucht I wes indigii [unworthy.j With hart and hand and every other thing That micht him pleis in my maner best ; Quhill hie invy me from his service kest, Be thame that had the court in governing, As bird but plumes heryit of the nest. The biographer of Ballentyne, above quoted, supposes that he must have been the " Maister Johnne Ballentyne," who, in 1528, was " secretar and servitour " to Archibald Earl of Angus, and in that capacity appeared before parliament to state his master's reasons for not answering the summons of treason which had been issued against him. We can scarcely, however, reconcile the circumstance of his being then a " Douglas's man," with the favour he is found to have enjoyed a few years after with James V., whose antipathy to that family was so great as probably to extend to all its connections. However this may be, Ballentyne is thus celebrated, in 1530, as a court poet, by Sir David Lyndsay, who had been in youth his fellow-student at St Andrews, and was afterwards his fellow-servant in the household of the king : But now of late has start up heastily A cunning clerk that writeth craftily; A plant of poets, called Ballanten, Whose ornat writs my wit cannot defyne ; Get he into the court authority, He will precel Quintin and Kenedy. In 1530 and 1531, Ballentyne was employed, by command of the king, in translating Boece's History, which had been published at Paris in 1526. The object of this translation was to introduce the king and others who had " missed Jheir Latin," to a knowledge of the history of their country. In the epistl the king at the conclusion of this work, Ballenden passes a deserved complin upon his majesty, for having " dantit this region and brocht the same to si rest, gud peace and tranquillity ; howbeitthe same could nocht be done be you gret baronis during your tender age ;" and also says, without much flattery, "Your nobilland worthy deidis proceeds mair be naturall inclination and actn curate, than ony gudly persuasioun of assisteris." He also attests Ins own sin- cerity, by a lecture to the king on the difference between tyrannical and just government ; which, as a curious specimen of the prose composition of that tune, 126 JOHN BALLENTYNE (OK BELLENDEN). ind also a testimony to the enlightened and upright character of Ballentyue, v e shall extract into these pages : " As Seneca says in his tragedeis, all ar nocht kingis that bene clothit with pur pure and dredoure, but only they that sekis na singulare proflet, in dammage ol the coramonweill ; and sa vigilant that the life of their subdetis is mair deir and precious to them than thair awin life. Ane tyrane sekis riches ; ane king sekis honour, conquest be virtew. Ane tyrane governis his realmis be slauchter, dre- doure, and lalsi't ; ane king gidis his realnie be prudence, integrite, and favour. Ane tyrane suspeckis all them that hes riches, gret doniinioun, auctorite, or gret rentis ; ane king haldis sic men for his maist helply friendis. Ane tyrane luffis nane bot vane fleschouris, vicious and wicket lymmaris, be quhais counsall he rages in slauchter and tyranny ; ane king luffis men of wisdom, gravite, and science ; knawing weill that his gret materis maybe weill dressit be thair pru- dence. Treuth is that kingis and tyrannis hes mony handis, mony ene, and mony mo memberis. Ane tyrane sets him to be dred ; ane king to be luffet. Ane tyrane rejoises to mak his pepill pure ; ane king to mak tbame riche. Ane tyrane draws his pepill to sindry factiones, discord, and hatrent ; ane king ninks peace, tranquillite, and concord ; knawing nothing sa dammagious as di- vision amang his subdittis. Ane tyrane confounds all divine and hummane lawis ; ane king observis thaime, and rejoises in equite arid justice. All thir pro- perteis sal be patent, in reding the livis of gud and evil kingis, in the history precedent." To have spoken in this way to an absolute prince shows Ballentyne to have been not altogether a courtier. He afterwards adds, in a finely impassioned strain : " Quhat thing maybe mair plesand than to se in this present volume, as in ane cleir mirroure all the variance of tyme bygane ; the sindry chancis of fourtoun ; the bludy fechting and terrible berganis sa mony years continuit, in the defence of your realm and liberte ; quhilk is fallen to your hieness with gret felicita. howbeit the samin has aftimes been ransomit with maist nobill blude of your antecessoris. Quhat is he that wil nocht rejoise to heir the knychtly afaris of thay forcy campions, King Robert Bruce and William Wallace ? The first, be innative desyre to re- cover his realme, wes brocht to sic calamite, that mony dayis he durst nocht appeir in sicht of pepill ; but amang desertis, levand on rutes and herbis, in esperance of better fortoun ; bot at last, be his singulare manheid, he come to sic preeminent glore, that now he is reput the maist valyeant prince that was eftir or before his empire. This other, of small beginning, be feris enrage and corporall strength, not only put Englishmen out of Scotland, but als, be feir of his awful visage, put Edward king of England to flicht ; and held all the bor- ders fornence Scotland waist" Ballentyne delivered a manuscript copy of his work to the king, in the sum- mer of 1533, and about the same time he appears to have been engaged in a translation of Livy. The following entries in the treasurer's book give a curi- ous view of the prices of literary labour, in the court of a king of those days. " To Maister John Ballentyne, be the kingis precept, for his translating of the Chronykill, 30. " 1531, Oct 4th. To Maister John BaUantyne, be the kingis precept, for his translating of the Chroniclis, 30. " Item, Thairefter to the said Maister Johne, be the kingis command, 6. " 1533, July 26. To Maister John Ballentyne, for ane new Chronikle gevin to the kingis grace, 12. " Item, To him in part payment of the translation of Titus Livius, 8. HENRY BALNAVES. 127 " Au g- 24. To Maister John Ballentyne, in part payment of the second buke of Titus Livius, 8. NOT. 30. To Maister John Ballentyne, be the kingis precept, for his laboris dune in translating of Livie, 20. The literary labours of Ballentyne were still further rewarded by his royal master, with an appointment to the arcbdeanery of Moray, and the escheated property and rents of two individuals, who became subject to the pains of trea- son for having used influence with the Pope to obtain the same benefice, againsl the king's privilege. He subsequently got a vacant prebendaryship in the cathedral of Ross. His translation of Boece was printed in 1536, by Thomas Davidson, and had become in later times almost unique, till a new edition was published in a remarkably elegant style, in 1821, by Messrs Tait, Edinburgh. At the same time appeared the translation of the first two books of Livy, which had never before been printed. The latter work seems to have been carried no further by the translator. Ballentyne seems to have lived happily in the sunshine of court favour during the remainder of the reign of James V. The opposition which he afterwards presented to the reformation, brought him into such odium, that he retired from his country in disgust, and died at Rome, about the year 1550. The translations of Ballentyne are characterised by a striking felicity of lan- guage, and also by a freedom that shows his profound acquaintance with the learned language upon which he wrought. His Chronicle, which closes with the reign of James I., is rather a paraphrase than a literal translation of Boece, and possesses in several respects the character of an original work. Many of the historical errors of the latter are corrected not a few of his redundancies re- trenched and his more glaring omissions supplied. Several passages in the work are highly elegant, and some descriptions of particular incidents reach to something nearly akin to the sublime. Many of the works of Ballenden are lost among others a tract on the Pythagoric letter, and a discourse upon Vir- tue and Pleasure. He also wrote many political pieces, the most of which are lost Those which have reached us are principally Proems prefixed to his prose works, a species of composition not apt to bring out the better qualities of a poet ; yet they exhibit the workings of a rich and luxuriant fancy, and abound in lively sallies of the imagination. They are generally allegorical, and distin- guished rather by incidental beauties, than by the skilful structure of the fable. The story, indeed, is often dull, the allusions obscure, and the general scope of the piece unintelligible. These faults, however, are pretty general characteris- tics of allegorical poets, and they are atoned for, in him, by the striking thoughts and the charming descriptions in which he abounds, and which, " like threds of gold, the rich arras, beautify his works quite thorow." BALNAVES, HENRY, of Halhill, an eminent lay reformer, and also a prose- writer of some eminence, was born of poor parents in the town of Kirkaldy. After an academical course at St Andrews, he travelled to the continent, and, hearing of a free school in Cologne, procured admission to it. and received a li beral education, together with instruction in protestant principles. Returning to his native country, he applied himself to the study of law, and acted for some time as a procurator at St Andrews. In the year 1538, he was appointed by James V. a senator of the college of Justice, a court only instituted five years be- fore. Notwithstanding the jealousy of the clergy, who hated him on account of his religious sentiments, he was employed on important embassies by James \., and subsequently by the governor Arran, during the first part of whose regency he acted as secretary of state. Having at length made an open profession of the Protestant religion, he was, at the instigation of Arran's brother, the Abbot of HENRY BALNAVES. Paisley, dismissed from that situation. He now appears to have entered into tho interests of the English party against the governor, and accordingly, with the I'iirl of Rothes and Lord Gray, was thrown into Blackness Castle (November 1343), where he probably remained till relieved next year, on the appearance of the English fleet in the Firth of Forth. There is much reason to believe that this sincere and pious man was privy to the conspiracy formed against the life of Car- dinal Beaton; an action certainly not the brightest in the page of Scottish his- tory, but of which it is not too much to say, that it might have been less defensi- ble if its motive had not been an irregular kind of patriotism. Balnaves, though he did not appear among the tactual perpetrators of the assassination, soon after joined them in the castle of St Andrews, which they held out against the gover- nor. He was consequently declared a traitor and excommunicated. His prin- dpjil employment in the service of the conspirators seems to have been that of an ambassador to the English court. In February 1 54(i-7, he obtained from Henry VIII. a subsidy of jll80, besides a quantity of provisions, for his com- patriots, and a pension of 125 to himself, which was to run from the '25th of .March. On the 1 5th of this latter month, he had become bound along with liis friends, to deliver up Queen Mary, and also the castle of St Andrews, into the hands of the English; and, in May, he obtained a further sum of .300. While residing in the castle, he was instrumental, along with Mr John Rough and Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, in prevailing upon John Knox to preach publicly in St Andrews the first regular ministration in the reformed religion in Scotland. When the defenders of the castle surrendered in August, Balnaves shared in their fate, along with Knox, and many other eminent persons. He was conveyed to the castle of Rouen in France, and there committed to close confinement. Yet he still found occasional opportunities to communicate with his friend Knox. Having employed himself, during his solitary hours, in composing a Treatise on Justification, he conveyed it to the reformer, who was so much pleased with it, that he divided it into chapters, added some marginal notes and a concise epi- tome of its contents, and prefixed a commendatory dedication, intending that it should be published in Scotland as soon as opportunity ottered. This work fell aside for some years, but, after Knox's death, was discovered in the house of Or- miston by Richard Bannatyne, and was published at Edinburgh, in 1584, under the title of " 'Ihe Confession of Faith, containing, how the troubled man should seek refuge at his God, thereto led by Faith ; &c., Compiled by M. Henrie Bal- naves of Halhill, one of the Lords of Session and counsell of Scotland, being as prisoner within the old pallaice of Roane, in the year of our Lord, 1548. Di- rect to his faithful brethren being in like trouble or more, and to all true profes- sors and favourers of the syncere worde of God." Dr M'Crie has given some extracts from this work in his Life of John Knox. After his return from ban- ishment, Balnaves took a bold and conspicuous part in the contest carried on by the lords of the congregation against the Regent Mary. He was one of the commissioners, who, in February, 1559-60, settled the treaty at Berwick, between the former insurgent body and the Queen of England, in consequence of which the Scottish reformation was finally established, through aid from a country al- ways heretofore the bitterest enemy of Scotland. In 15(53, he was re-appointed to the bench, and also nominated as one of the commissioners for revising the Book of Discipline. He acted some years later, along with Buchanan and others, as counsellors to the Earl of Murray, in the celebrated inquiry by English and Scottish commissioners into the alleged guilt of Queen Mary. He died, accord- ing to Mackenzie, in 1 579. " In his Treatise upon Justification," says the latter authority, " he affirms thai GEORGE BANNATYNB. the justification spoken of by St James is different from that spoken of by St Paul : For the justification by good works, which St James speaks of, only justi- fies us before man ; but the justification by faith, which St Paul speaks of, justi- fies us before God : And that all, yea even the best of our good works, are but sins before God." " And," adds Mackenzie, with true Jacobite sarcasm, " whatever may be in this doctrine of our author's, I think we may grant to him that the most of all his actions which he valued himself upon, and reckoned good works, were really great and Jieinous sins before God, for no good man will justify rebellion and murder." Without entering into the controversies involved by this proposition, either as to the death of Cardinal Beaton, or the accusations against Queen Mary, we may content ourselves with quoting the opinion entertained of Balnaves by the good and moderate Melville ; he was, according to this writer, " a godly, learned, wise, and long experimented counsellor." ' A poem' by Balnaves, entitled, " An advice to headstrong Youth," is selected from Bannatyne's manuscript into the Evergreen. BANNATYNF, GEORGE, takes his title to a place in this work from a source of lame participated by no other individual within the range of Scottish biogra- phy ; it is to this person that we are indebted for the preservation of nearly all the productions of the Scottish poets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Though the services he has thus rendered to his country were in some measure the result of accident, yet it is also evident that, if he had not been a person of eminent literary taste, and also partly a poet himself, we should never have had to celebrate him as a collector of poetry. The compound claim which he has thus established to our notice, and the curious antique picture which is presented to our eye by even the little that is known regarding his character and pursuits, will, it is hoped, amply justify his admission into this gallery of eminent Scotsmen. George Bannatyne was born in an elevated rank of society. His father, James Bannatyne, of the Kirktown of Newtyle, in the county of Forfar, was a writer in Edinburgh, at a time when that profession must have been one of some distinction and rarity ; and he was probably the person alluded to by Robert Semple, in " The Defens of Grissell Sandylands :" " For men of law I wait not quhair to luke : James Bannatyne was anis a man of skill.*' It also appears that James Bannatyne held the office of TABULAR to the Lords of Session, in which office his eldest son (afterwards a Lord of Council and Session) was conjoined with him as successor, by royal precept dated May 2, 1583. James Bannatyne is further ascertained to have been connected with the very ancient and respectable family of Bannachtyne, or Bannatyne of Camys, [now I ames] in the island of Bute. He was the father, by his wife Katharine Tail- liefer, of twemy-threi: children, nine of whom, who survived at the time of his leath, in 1583, were " we ill, and sufficiently provydit be him, under God." George Bannatyne, the seventh child of his parents, was born on the 22nd day of Jbebrurry, 1545, and was bred up to trade. 1 It is, however, quite unrer- i In a memoir of George Bannatyne, by Sir Walter Scott, prefixed to a collection of me- morabilia regarding him,\vhich ha= been printed for the Bannatyne Club, it that he was not catty engaged in business, but this supposition seems only to n uncenr.in inference from a passage in George Bannatyne's "Memonall Sink, T five years of age. 130 GEORGE BANNATYNE. tain at what time he began to be engaged in business on his own account, or whether he spent his youth in business or not. Judging, however, as the world is apt to judge, we should suppose, from his taste for poetry, and his having been a writer of verses himself, that he was at least no zealous applicant to any com- mercial pursuit Two poems of his, written before the age of twenty-three, are full of ardent though conceited affection towards some fair mistress, whom he describes in the most extravagantly complimentary terms. It is also to be sup- posed that, at this age, even though obliged to seek some amusement during a time of necessary seclusion, he could not have found the means to collect, 01 the taste to execute, such a mass of poetry as that which bears his name, if he had not previously been almost entirely abandoned to this particular pur- suit. At the same time, there is some reason to suppose that he was not alto- gether an idle young man, given up to vain fancies, from the two first lines of his valedictory address at the end of his collection : " Heir eridis this Buik vvrittin in tyme of pest, Quhen we fra labor was compel'd to rest." Of the transaction on which the whole fame of George Bannatyne rests, we give the following interesting account from the Memoir just quoted : " It is seldom that the toils of the amanuensis are in themselves interesting or that, even while enjoying the advantages of the poor scribe's labour, we are disposed to allow him the merit of more than mere mechanical drudgery. But in the compilation of George Bannatyne's manuscript, there are particulars which rivet our attention on the writer, and raise him from a humble copyist into a national benefactor. " Baunatyue's Manuscript is in a folio form, containing upwards of eight hundred pages, very neatly and closely written, and designed, as has been sup- posed, to be sent to the press. The labour of compiling so rich a collection was undertaken by the author during the time of pestilence, in the year 1568, when the dread of infection compelled men to forsake their usual employments, which could not be conducted without admitting the ordinary promiscuous inter- course between man and his kindred men. " In this dreadful period, when hundreds, finding themselves surrounded by danger and death, renounced all care save that of selfish precaution for their own safety, and all thoughts save apprehensions of infection, George Bannatyns had the courageous energy to form and execute the plan of saving the literature of a whole nation ; and, undisturbed by the universal mourning for the dead, and general fears of the living, to devote himself to the task of collecting ami recording the triumphs of human genius; thus, amid the wreck of all that w; s mortal, employing himself in preserving the lays by which immortality is at ones given to others, and obtained for the writer himself. His task, he informs us, had its difficulties ; for he complains that he had, even in his time, to contend with the disadvantage of copies old, maimed, and mutilated, and which long before our day must, but for this faithful transcriber, have perished entirely. The very labour of procuring the originals of the works which he transcribed, must have been attended with much trouble and some risk, at a time when all the usual intercourse of life was suspended, and when we can conceive that even so simple a circumstance as the borrowing and lending a book of ballads, was accompanied with some doubt and apprehension, and that probably the suspected volume was subjected to fumigation, and the precautions used in quarantine. 2 2 With deference to Sir Walter, we would suggest that the suspicion under which books are always held at a time of pestilenon, as a means of conveying the infection, gives great reason to suppose that George Bannatyne had previously collected his original manuscripts, and oifly took this opportunity of transcribing them The writing of eight hundred foJio GEORGE BANNATYNE. * * * " In the reign of James IV. and V., the fine arts, as they awakened in other countries, made some progress in Scotland also. Architecture and music were encouraged by botli of those accomplished sovereigns ; and poetry above all, seems to have been highly valued at the Scottish court The King of Scotland, who, in point of power, seems to have been little more than the first baron of his kingdom, held a free and merry court, in which poetry and satire seem to have had unlimited range, even where their shafts glanced on royalty itself. The consequence of this general encouragement was the production of much poetry of various kinds, and concerning various persons, which the narrow exer- tions of the Scottish press could not convey to the public, or which, if printed at all, existed only in limited editions, which soon sunk to the rarity of manu- scripts. There was therefore an ample mine out of which Bannatyne made his compilation, with the intention, doubtless, of putting the Lays of the Makers out of the reach of oblivion, by subjecting the collection to the press. But the bloody wars of Queen Mary's time 3 made that no period for literary adventure ; and the tendency of the subsequent age to polemical discussion, discouraged lighter and gayer studies. There is, therefore, little doubt, that had Bannatyne lived Later than he did, or had he been a man of less taste in selecting his materials, a great proportion of the poetry contained in his volume must have been lost to posterity ; and, if the stock of northern literature had been diminished only by the loss of such of Dunbar's pieces as Bannatyne's Manuscript contains, the da- mage to posterity would have been infinite." The pestilence which caused Bannatyne to go into retirement, commenced at Edinburgh upon the 8th of September, 1568, being introduced by a merchant of the name of Dalgleish. We have, however, no evidence to prove that Ban- natyne resided at this time in the capital. We know, from his own informa- tion, that he wrote his manuscript during the subsequent months of October, November, and December ; which might almost seem to imply that he had lived in some other town, to which the pestilence only extended at the end of the month in which it appeared in Edinburgh. Leaving this in uncertainty, it is not perhaps too much to suppose that he might have adopted this means of spending his time of seclusion, from the fictitious example held out by Boccacio, who represents the tales of his Decameron as having been told for mutual amuse- ment, by a company of persons who had retired to the country to escape the plague. A person so eminently acquainted with the poetry of his own country, might well be familiar with the kindred work of that illustrious Italian. The few remaining facts of George Bannatyne's life, which have been gathered up by the industry of Sir Walter Scott, may be briefly related. In 1572, he was provided with a tenement in the town of Leith, by a gift from his father. This would seem to imply that he was henceforward, at least, engaged in busi- ness, and resided either in Edinburgh or at its neighbouring port. It was not, how- ever, till the 27th of October, 1587, that, being then in his forty-third year, he was admitted in due and competent form to the privileges of a merchant and guild-brother of the city of Edinburgh. " We have no means of knowing what branch of traffic George Bannatyne chiefly exercised ; it is probable that, as usual in a Scottish burgh, his commerce was general and miscellaneous. A\e pages in the careful and intricate style of caligraphy then practised, appears a sufficient task in itself for three months, without supposing that any part of the time was spent in collect- ing manuscripts. And hence we see the greater reason for supposing that a large part of the attention of George Bannatyne before his twenty-third year was devoted to {Scottish poetry. , 3 The accomplished writer should rather have said, the minority of James VI., whose reign had commenced before the manuscript was written. GKOIIGB BANNATYNE. have reason to know that it was successful, as we find him in a few years pns- sessed of a considerable capital, the time being considered, which he employed to advantage in various money-lending transactions. It must not be forgot that the penal laws of the Catholic period pronounced all direct taking of interest upon money, to be usurious and illegal. These denunciations did not deciease the desire of the wealthy to derive some profit from their capital, or diminish the necessity of the embarrassed land-holder who wished to borrow money. The mutual interest of the parties suggested various evasions of the law, of which the most common was, that the capitalist advanced to his debtor the sum wanted, as the price of a corresponding annuity, payable out of the lands and tenements of the debtor, which annuity was rendered redeemable upon the said debtor repay- ing the sum advanced. The moneyed man of those days, therefore, imitated the conduct imputed to the Jeuisii patriarch by Shylock. They did not take interest not as you would say Directly interest, but they retained payment of an annuity as long as the debtor retained the use of their capital, which came to much the same thing. A species of transaction was contrived, as affording a convenient mode of securing the lender's money. Our researches have discovered that George Bannatyne had sufficient funds to enter into various transactions of this kind, in the capacity of lender ; and, as we have no reason to suppose that he profited unfairly by the necessities of the other party, he cannot be blamed for having- recourse to the ordinary expedi- ents, to avoid the penult y of an absurd law, and accomplish a fair transaction, dictated by mutual expediency." Bannatyue, about the same time that he became a burgess of Edinburgh, ap- pears to have married his spo;ise, Isobel Mawchan [apparently identical with the modern name Maughari], who was the relict of Bailie William Xisbett, and must have been about forty years of age at the time of her second nuptials, supposing 1586 to be the date of that event, which is only probable from the succeeding year having produced her first child by Bannatyne. This child was a daughter, by name Janet, or Jonet ; she was born on the 3rd of May, 1587. A son, James, born on the 6th of September, 1589, and who died young, completes the sum of Bannatyne's family. The father of Bannatyne died in the year 1583, and was succeeded in his estate of Newtyle, by his eldest living son, Thomas, who became one of the Lords of Session by that designation, an appointment which forms an additional voucher for the general respectability of the family. George Bannatyne was, on the 27th of August, 1603, deprived of his affectionate helpmate, Isobel Mawchan, at the age of fifty-seven, She had lived, according to her husband's " Memorial!," " a godly, honourable, and virtuous life ; was a wise, honest, and true matron, and departed in the Lord, in a peaceful and godly manner." George Bannatyne hi mself deceased previous to the year 1608, leaving onl\ one child, Janet, who had, in 1603, been married to George Foulis of Woodhail and Ravelstone, second son of James Foulis of Colingtoun. His valuable col- lection of Scottish poetry was preserved in his daughter's family till 1712, \vhen his great-grandson, William Foulis of Woodhall, bestowed it upon the Honourable William Carmichael of Skirling, advocate, brother to the Earl of Hyndford, a gentleman who appears to have had an eminent taste for such monuments of antiquity. While in the possession of Mr Carmichael, it was borrowed by Allan Kamsay, who selected from its pages the materials of his popular collection, styled, "The Evergreen." Lord Hailes, in 1770, published a second and more correct selection from the Bannatyne Manuscript; and the venerable tome was, JOHN HARBOUR. 133 in 1772, by the liberality -of John, third Earl of Hyndford, deposited in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, where it still remains. We have already alluded to George Bannatyne as a poet; and it remains t be shown in what degree he was entitled to that designation. To tell the truth, his verses display little, in thought or imagery, that could be expected to interest the present generation ; neither was he perhaps a versifier of great repute, even in his o\vn time. He seems to have belonged to a class very numerous in pri- vate life, who are eminently capable of enjoying poetry, and possess, to appear- ance, all the sensibilities which are necessary to its production ; but, wanting the active or creative power, rarely yield to the temptation of writing verse, without a signal defeat. Such persons, of whom George Bannatyne was certainly one, may be said to have negative, but not positive poetry. As it seems but fair, however, that he who has done so much to bring the poetry of others before the world, should not have his own altogether confined to the solitude of manuscript, or the unobvious print of his own bibliographical society, we subjoin a specimen from one of the very few pieces which have come down to our own time. The verses which follow are the quaint, but characteristic conclusion of a sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow. It is ludicrous to observe theology pressed by the ve- nerable rhymester into the service of love. " Na tiling of rycht I ask, ray Lady fair, Bot of fre will and mercy me to saif ; Your will is your awin, as ressoun wald it ware, Thairfoir of grace, and nocht of rycht I craif Of you mercy, as ye wald mercy haif Off God our Lord, quii ji-s mercyis infeneit Gois befoire all his worlds, we may persaif, To thame quhois hanrtis with marcy ar repleit. Now to conclude with wordis compendious ; Wald God my tong wald to my will respond, And eik my speich was so facuiidioas, That I was full of rethore termys jocond ! Than suld my lufe at nioir length be expoiisd, Than my cunnying can to you heir declair ; For this my style inornetly compond, Eschangs my pen your eiris to truble mair. Go to my deir with humm'll reverence, Tiiou bony bill, both rude and imperfeyte ; Go, nocht will forgit flattery to her presence, As is of falset the custome use and ryte ; Causs me nocht BAN that evir I the indyte. NA TTNE rny travel!, turning all in vane ; Bot with ane faithfull hairt, in word and wryte, Declair my mind and bring me joy agane. My name quha list to knaw, let him tak tent Vnto this littill verse nixt presedent." It only remains to be mentioned that the name of George Bannatyne has been appropriately adopted by a company of Scottish literary antiquaries interested, PP e him, in'the preservation of such curious memorials of the taste of pas age, well as such monuments of history, as might otherwise run the hazard as ARBOUR, JOHN, a name of which Scotland has just occasion to be proud, was Archdeacon of Aberdeen in the later part of the fourteenth century. There 134 JOHN BARBOUR. has been much idle controversy as to the date of his birth ; while all that is known with historic certainty, may be related in a single sentence. As he was an archdeacon in 1357, and as, by the canon law, no man, without a dispensa- tion, can attain that rank under the age of twenty-live, he was probably born be- fore the year 1332. There is considerable probability that he was above the age of twenty-five in 1357, for not only is that date not mentioned as the year of his attaining the rank of archdeacon, but in the same year he is found exer- cising a very important political trust, which we can scarcely suppose to have been confided to a man of slender age, or scanty experience. This was the duty of a commissioner from the Bishop of Aberdeen, to meet with other commissioners at Edinburgh, concerning the ransom of David II., who was then a prisoner in England. As to the parentage or birth-place of Barbour, we have only similar conjec- tures. Besides the probability of his having been a native of the district in which he afterwards obtained high clerical rank, it can be shown that there were individuals of his name, in and about the town of Aberdeen, who might have been his father. Thus, in 1309, Robert Bruce granted a charter to Robert Bar- bour, " of the lands of Craigie, within the shirefdom of Forfar, quhilk sumtyme were Joannis de Baliolo." There is also mention, in the Index of Charters, of a tenement in the Castle-street of Aberdeen, which, at a period remotely antecedent to 1360, belonged to Andrew Barbour. The name, which appears to have been one of that numerous class derived from trades, is also found in per- sons of the same era, who were connected with the southern parts of Scotland. In attempting the biography of an individual who lived four or five centuries ago, and whose life was commemorated by no contemporary, all that can be ex- pected is a few unconnected, and perhaps not very interesting facts. It is already established that Barbour, in 1357, was Archdeacon of the cathedral of Aberdeen, and fulfilled a high trust imposed upon him by his bishop. It is equally ascertained that, in the same year, he travelled, with three scholars in his company, to Oxford, for purposes connected with study. A safe-conduct granted to him by Edward III., August 23d, at the request of David II., conveys this information in the following terms : " Veniendo, cum tribus scholaribus in comitiva sua, in regnum nostrum Anglias, causa studendi in universitate Oxonias et ibidem actus scholasticos exercendo, morando, exinde in Scotiam ad propria redeundo." It might have been supposed that Barbour only officiated in this expedition as tutor to the three scholars ; but that he was himself bent on study at the university, is proved by a second safe-conduct, granted by the same mon- arch, November Gth, 1364, in the following terms : "To Master John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, with four knights (equites), coming from Scotland, by land or sea, into England, to study at Oxford, or elsewhere, as he may think proper." As also from a third, bearing date November 30th, 1368, " To Master John Barbour, with two valets and two horses, to come into Eng- land, and travel through the same, to the other dominions of the king, versus Franciam, causa studiendi, and of returning again." It would thus appear that Barbour, even after that he had attained a high ecclesiastical dignity, found it agreeable or necessary to spend several winters at Oxford in study. When we recollect that at this time there was no university in Scotland, and that a man of such literary habits as Barbour could not fail to find himself at a loss even for the use of a library in his native country, we are not to wonder at his occasional pilgrimages to the illustrious shrine of learning on the banks of the Isis. Or the 16th of October, 1635, he received another safe-conduct from Edward III., peimitting him ' to come into England and travel throughout that kingdom, mm sex sociis suis equitibus, usque Sanctum Dionisium ;" i. e. with six knights JOHN BARBOUR. 135 in company, to St Denis in France. Such slight notices suggest curious and in- teresting views of the manners of that early time. We are to understand from them, that Barbotir always travelled in a very dignified manner, being sometimes attended by four knights and sometimes by no fewer than six, or at least, by two mounted servants. A man accustomed to such state might be the better able to compose a chivalrous epic like " the Bruce." There is no other authentic document regarding Barbour till the year 1373, when his name appears in the list of Auditors of Exchequer for that year, being then described as " Clericus Probationis domus domini nostri Regis ;" i. e. ap- parently Auditor of the comptroller's accounts for the royal household. This, however, is too obscure and solitary an authority to enable us to conclude that he bore an office under the king. Hume of Godscroft, speaking of " the Bruce ? s book," says : " As I am informed, the book was penned by a man of good know- ledge and learning, named Master John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeene, foi which work he had a yearly pension out of the exchequer during his life, which he gave to the hospitall of that towne, and to which it is allowed and paid still in our dayes." 1 This fact, that a pension was given him for writing his book, is authenticated by an unquestionable document. In the Rotuli Ballivorum Bur- gi de Aberdonia for 1471, the entry of the discharge for this royal donation bears that it was expressly given " for the compilation of the book of the Deeds of King Robert the First," referring to a prior statement of this circumstance in the more ancient rolls : " Et Deeano et Capitulo Abirdonensi percipienti an- nuatim viginti solidos pro anniversario quondam Magistri Johannis Barberi, pro compilatione libri gestorum Regis Roberti primi, ut patet in antiquis Rotulis de anno Compoti, xx. s." The first notice we have of Barbour receiving a pension is dated February 18th, 1390; and although this period was only about two months before the death of Robert the Second, it appears from the rolls that to that monarch the poet was indebted for the favour. In the roll for April 26th, 1398, this language occurs: " Quam recolendie memorie quondam dominus Robertus secundus, rex Scottorum, dedit, concessit. et carta sua confirmavit quon- dam Johanni Barbere archediacono Aberdonensi," &c. In the roll dated June 2d, 1424, the words are these : " Deeano et capitulo ecclesiae cathedralis Aber- donensis percipientibus annuatim viginti solidos de firmis dicti burgi pro anni- versario quondam magistri Johannis Barbar pro compilacione libri de gestis Regis Roberti Brwise, ex concessione regis Roberti secundi, in plenam solucionem dicte pensionis," &c. Barbour's pension consisted of 10 Scots from the cus- toms of Aberdeen, and of 20 shillings from the rents or burrow-mails of the same city. The first sum was limited to " the life of Barbour ;" the other to " his assignees whomsoever, although he should have assigned it in the way of mortification." Hume of Godscroft and others are in a mistake in supposing that he appropriated this sum to an hospital (for it appears from the accounts of the great chamberlain that he left it to the chapter of the cathedral church of Aberdeen, for the express purpose of having mass said for his soul annually after his decease : " That the dean and canons of Aberdeen, for the time being, also the chapter and other ministers officiating at the same time in the said church, shall annually for ever solemnly celebrate once in the year an anniver- sary for the soul of the said umquhile John." Barbour's anniversary, it is supposed continued till the reformation ; and then the sum allowed for it reverted to the crown. All that is further known of Earbnur is, that he died towards the close of 1395. This appears from the Chartulary of Aberdeen, and it is the last year in which the payment of his pension of jlO stands on the record. ' History of the Douglasses. JOHN BARBOUR. "The Bruce," which Barbour himself in forms us he wrote in the year 1375, is a metrical history of Robert the First his exertions and achievements for tlu- recovery of the independence of Scotland, and the principal transactions of his reign. As Barbour flourished in the age immediately following that of his hero, he must have enjoyed the advantage of hearing from eye-witnesses narratives of the war of liberty. As a history, his work is of good authority; he himsei. boasts of its soothfastness ; and the simple and straight-forward way in whir.i the story is told goes to indicate its general veracity. Although, however, the object of the author was mainly to give a soothfast history of the life and tran- sactions of Robert the Bruce, the work is far from being destitute of poetic.'.! feeling or rhythmical sweetness and harmony. The lofty sentiments and vivid descriptions with which it abounds, prove the author to have been fitted by feeling and by principle, as well as by situation, for the task which he undertook. His genius has lent truth all the charms that are usually supposed to belong to fiction The horrors of war are softened by strokes of tenderness that make us equally in love with the hero and the poet. In battle painting, Barbour is eminent : the battle of Bannockburn is described with a minuteness, spirit, and fervency, worthy of the day. The following is a part of the description of that noble en- gagement, and presents a striking picture of a mortal combat before tho intro- duction of gunpowder m:ide warfare less a matter of brute force. with wapynys stalwart of stele They dang upon, with all thair mycht Their fayis resawyt wele, Ik hycht, With swerdis, speris, anil with mase The battaill thair sa feloun was, And swa rycht spilling of blud, That on the erd the sloussis stud. The Scottsmen sa weill thaim bar, And swa gret slauchter maid thai thar. And fra sa fele the lyvis rewyt, That all the feld bludy was lewyt. Thai tyme thir thre bataills wer, All syd be syd, fechtand weill ner, Thar mycht men her monydint, And wapynys apon armurs stynt, And se tumble knychts and steds, And mony rych and reale weds. Defoullyt foully undre fete, Sum held on loft ; sum tynt the snet A lang quhill thus fechtand thai war -, That men na noyis mycht her thair; Men hard noucht, but granys, and dynts That flew fyr, as men flayis on flynts. Thai faucht ilkane sa egrely, That thai maid na noyis na cry, But dan? on othyr at thair mycht, With wapnys that war burnyst brycht Whar mycht men se men felly fycht, And men, that worthy war and wychtt Do mony worthy wassellage. Whai faucht as thai war in a rage. For quhen the Scotts archery Saw thair fayis sa sturdely JOHN BARBOUR. 137 Stand into bataill them agayne ; With all thair mycht, and all thairmayne, Thai layid on, as men out off wyt. And quhar thai, with full strak, mycht liyt, Thar mycht na armur stynt thair strak. Thai to fruchyt that thai mycht ourtak. And with axys such dusches gave, That thai helmys, and heds, clave. And thair fayis rycht bardely Met thaim, and dung on them douchtely, With wapyngs that war styth off' stele. Thar wes the bataill strekyt weill. Sa gret dyn that wes off dynts, As wapyngs apon armur stynts ; And off spers sa gret bresting ; And sic thrang, and sic thrysting ; Sic gyrning, granyng ; and sa gret A noyis, as thai gan othyr beit : And ensenyeys on ilka sid : Gewand, and takand, wounds wid ; That it wes hidwyss for to her. Book xiii. 1. 14 & 138. The apostrophe to Freedom, after the painful description of the slavery t which Scotland was reduced by Edward, is in a style of poetical feeling very uncommon in that and many subsequent ages, and has been quoted with high praise by the most distinguished Scottish historians and critics : A ! fredome is a iiobill thing ! Fredome mayse man to haiff liking! Fredome all solace to man giffis: He levys at ese that f rely levys ! A noble hart may haiff nane ese, Na ellys nocht that may him plese, Gyff fredome failythe : for fre liking Is yeaniyt our all othir thing Na he, that ay hase levyt fre, May nocht knaw weill the propyrte, The angyr, na the wrechyt dome, That is cowplyt to foule thyrldome. Bot gyff he had assayit it, Than all perquer he suld it wyt ; And suld think fredome mar to pryse Than all the gold in warld that is.i Book i. I. 225- i Some readers may perhaps arrive at the sense of this fine passage more readily through the medium of the folio ^Pj^P^ =~ thing , And can to life a relish bring. Freedom all solace to man gives ; He lives at ease that freely lives. A noble heart may have no ease, Nor aught beside that may it please, If freedom fail for 'tis the choice, More than the chosen, man enjoys. Ah, he that ne'er yet lived in thrall, Knows not the weary pains which gall The limbs, the soul, of him who 'plains In slavery's foul and festering chains! If these he knew, 1 ween right soon He would seek back the precious boon Of freedom, which he then would prize More than all wealth beneath the skies. JOHN BAKBOUll. " Barbour," says an eminent critic in Scottish poetical literature, " was eviileni- ly skilled in such branches of knowledge as were then cultivated, and his learn- ing- was so well regulated as to conduce to the real improvement of his mind : the liberality of his views, and the humanity of his sentiments, appear occasion- ally to have been unconfined by the narrow boundaries of his own age. He has drawn various illustrations from ancient history, and from the stories of romance, but has rarely displayed his erudition by decking his verses with the names of ancient authors : the distichs of Cato, 2 and the spurious productions of Dares Phrygius, and Dictys Cretensis, are the only profane books to which he formally refers. He has borrowed more than one illustration from Statins, who was the favourite classic of those times, and who likewise appears to have been the fa- vourite of Barbour : the more chaste and elegant style of Virgil and Horace were not so well adapted to the prevalent taste as the strained thoughts and gorgeous diction of Statius and Claudian. The manner in which he has inci- dentally discussed the subject of astrology and necromancy, may be specified as not a little creditable to his good sense. It is well known that these branches of divination were assiduously cultivated during the ages of intellectual darkness. The absurdity of astrology and necromancy he has not openly attempted to ex- pose ; for as the opinions of the many, however unfounded in reason, must not be too rashly stigmatized, this might have been too bold and decided a step. Of the possibility of predicting events he speaks with the caution of a philosopher ; but the following passage may be considered as a sufficient indication of hi,, tic- liberate sentiments : And sen thai ar in sic wenyng, For owtyne certante off witting, Me think quha sayis he knawis tl, inn's To cum, he makys great gabingis. To form such an estimate, required a mind capable of resisting a strong torrent of prejudice ; nor is it superfluous to remark, that in an age of much higher re- finement, Dryden suffered himself to be deluded by the prognostications of judicial astrology. It was not, however, to be expected that Barbour should on every occasion evince a decided superiority to the. general spirit of the age to which he belonged. His terrible imprecation on the person who betrayed Sir Christopher Seton, " In hell coudampnyt mot he be ! " ought not to have been uttered by a Christian priest. His detestation of the treacherous and cruel King Edward, induced kim to lend a credulous ear to the report of his consulting an infernal spirit. The misfortunes which attended Bruce at almost every step of his early progress, he attributes to his sacrilegious act of skying Comyn at the high altar. He supposes that the women and children who assisted in supply- ing the brave defenders of Berwick with arrows and stones, were protected from injury by a miraculous interposition. Such instances of superstition or unchari table zeal are not to be viewed as marking the individual : gross superstition with its usual concomitants, was the general spirit of the time ; and the devia- tions from the ordinary track are to be traced in examples of liberal feeling or enlightened judgment" 3 One further quotation from the Scottish contemporary and rival of Chaucer may perhaps be admitted by the reader. As the former refer, one to a lofty incident, the other to a beautiful sentiment, the following is one of the slight and minute stoi-ies with which the poet fills up his narrative : z And Catone sayis us in his vrryt To fenyhe foly quhile is wyt The Bruce, 4to, ;>, 13. 8 Article BARI.OUR, written by Dr Irving, "in Encyclopedia Britannica, 7th edition. ALEXANDEll BARCLAY. 139 The king has hard a woman cry; He askyt quhat that wes in hy. " It is the layndar, Schyr," said anc, " That her child-ill rycht now has tane, " And mon leve now behind ws her; " Tharfor scho makys yone iwill cher." The king said, " Certis it war pite * That scho in that poynt left suld be ; " For certis I trow thar is na man " That be ne will rew a woman than." Hiss ost all thar arestyt he, And gert a tent sone stentit be, And gert hyr gang in hastily, And othyr wemen to be hyr by, Quhill scho wes delier, he bad, And syne furth on his wayis raid : And how scho furth suld cary it be, Or euir he furth fur, ordanyt be. This wes a full gret curtasy, That swilk a king, and sa mighty, Gert his men duell on this maner Bot for a pouir lauender. No one can fail to remark that, Avhile the incident is in the highest degree hon- ourable to Bruce, showing that the gentle heart may still he known by gentle deed, so also is Barbour entitled to the credit of humane feelings, from the way in which he had detailed and commented upon the transaction. Barbour was the author of another considerable work, which has unfortunately perished. This was a chronicle of Scottish history, probably in the manner of that by Andrew Winton. BARCLAY, ALKXANDER, a distinguished writer of the English tongue at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is known to have been a native of Scotland only by very obscure evidence. He spent some of his earliest years at Croydon. in Surrey, and it is conjectured that he received his education at one of the English Universities. In the year ]508, he was a prebendary' of the collegiate church of St Mary, at Ottery, in Devonshire. He was afterwards a Monk, first of the order of St Benedict at Ely, and latterly of the order of St Francis at Canterbury. While in this situation, and having the degree of Doctor of Pivi, nity, he published an English translation of the " Mirrour of Good Manners," fa treatise compiled in Latin by Dominyke Mancyn,) for the use of the " juvent of England." After the Reformation, Barcray accepted a ministerial charge under the new religion, as vicar of Much-Badew in Essex. In 1546, he was vicar of Wokey in Somersetshire, and in 1552 he was presented by the Dean and Chap- ter of London to the rectory of Allhallows in Lombard Street Having reached an advanced age, he died in June this year, at Croydon in Surrey, where he was buried. Barclay published a great number of books, original and translated, and allowed by the most intelligent enquirers into early English literature to hr.ve done more for the improvement of the language than any of his contemporary s. His chief poetical work is "the Ship of Fooles," which was written in imitation of a German work entitled, "Das Narren Schi/," published in 1 Ship of Fooles," which was first printed in 1509, describes a vessel laden wul, all sorts of absurd persons, though there seems to have been no end ,n view but to bring them into one place, so that they might be described, as the beasts were brought before Adam in order to be named. We shall transcribe one passage JOHN BARCLAY, A.M. from this work, as a specimen of the English style of Barclay : it u a curious contemporary character of King James IV. of Scotland. And, ye Christen princes, whosoever ye be, If ye be destitute of a noble captayne, Take James of Scotland for his audacitie And proved manhode, if ye will laude attaine: Let him have the forwarde : have ye no disdayn* Nor indignation ; for never king was borne That of ought of waure can shaw the uncorne. For if that once he take the speare in hand Agaynst these Turkes strongly with it to ride, None shall be able his stroke for to withstande Nor before his face so hardy to abide. Yet this his manhode increaseth not his pride ; But ever sheweth meeknes and humilitie, In worde or dede to hye and lowe degree. Barclay also made a translation of Sallust's History of the Jugurthine war, which was published in 1557, five years after his death, and is one of the earli- est specimens of English translation from the classics. BARCLAY, JOHN, A.M. was the founder of a religious sect in Scotland, gene- rally named Bereans, but sometimes called from the name of this individual, Barclayans. The former title derived its origin from the habit of Mr Barclay, in always making an appeal to the Scriptures, in vindication of any doctrine he advanced from the pulpit, or which was contained in his writings. The perfec- tion of the Scriptures, or of the Book of divine revelation, was the fundamental article of his system ; at least this was what he himself publicly declared upon all occasions, and the same sentiments are still entertained by his followers. In the Acts of the Apostles, xvii. 10. the Bereans are thus mentioned, "These Avere more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, arid searched the Scriptures daily, whether tuose things were so." These words were frequently quoted by Mr Barclay. It ought to be ob- served, however, that originally it was not a name of reproach invented by the malevolent part of the public, with the design of holding up Mr Barclay and his associates to contempt, but was voluntarily assumed by them, to distinguish them from other sects of professed Christians. Mr Barclay was born in 173k His father, Mr Ludovic Barclay, was a for- mer in the parish of Muthill, in the county of Perth. Being at an early age designed by his parents for the church, he was sent to school, and received the best education which that part of the country coidd afford. The name of his master is now forgotten, but if we are to judge from the eminent proficiency of the pupil, we must infer, that he was a good scholar and an excellent teacher, and was well aware of the absolute necessity and advantages of being well grounded in the elements of classical learning. Respectable farmers, such as Mr Barclay's father, had a laudable ambition in affording to their sons an oj- portunity of being instructed in the learned Languages, and to do the parish schoolmasters justice, many of them were eminently qualified for performing the t isk which they had undertaken. Young Barclay was sent by his father to St Andrews, and was enrolled as a stu- dent in that University ; where he regularly attended the literary and philosophi- cal classes, and having submitted to the usual examinations, he took the degree o? A.M. At the commencement of the subsequent session, he entered the New Divinity, or St Mary's College, a seminary in which theology alone is taught. Nothing very particular occurred during his attendance at the Hall, as it is generally JOHN BARCLAY, A.M. called. He was uniformly regular in his private conduct, ind though consti- tutionally of very impetuous passions, and a fervid imagination, at no time of his life was he ever seduced into the practice of what was immoral or vicious. The Christian principles, with which he seems to have been impressed very early in life, afforded him sufficient protection against the allurements or snares to which he was exposed. He prosecuted his studies with the most unremitted in- dustry, and with great care prepared the discourses prescribed by the professor, and publicly delivered in the Hall. While he attended the lectures on divinity, the University of St Andrews, and indeed the Church of Scotland in general, were placed in a very unpleasant si- tuation, by the agitation of a question which originated with Dr Archibald Campbell, professor of Church History in St Mary's College. He maintained " that the knowledge of the existence of God was derived from Revelation, not from Nature." This was long reckoned one of the errors of Socinus, and no one in Scotland, before Dr Campbell's time, had ever disputed the opinion that was generally current, and consequently esteemed orthodox. It was well known that the Doctor was not a Socinian, and did not favour any of the other dog- mas of that sect. The constitutional tendency of his mind was metaphysical, and he certainly was possessed of great acuteness, which enabled him to perceive on what point his opponents were most vulnerable, and where they laid them- selves open to attack. He published his sentiments without the least re-' serve, and was equally ready to enter upon a vindication of them. He considered his view of the subject as a foundation necessary to be laid in order to demon- strate the necessity of revelation. A whole host of opponents volunteered their services to strangle in the birth such dangerous sentiments. Innumerable pam- phlets rapidly made their appearance, and the hue and cry was so loud, and cer- tain persons so clamorous, that the ecclesiastical courts thought that they could no longer remain silent Dr Campbell was publicly prosecuted on account of his here- tical opinions, but after long litigation the matter was compromised, and the only effect it produced was, that the students at St Andrews in general became more zealous defenders of the Doctor's system, though they durst not avow it so openly. Among others, Mr Barclay with his accustomed zeal, and with all the energies of his juvenile but ardent mind, had warmly espoused Dr Campbell's system. Long before he left College he was noted as one of his most open and avowed partizans. These principles he never deserted, and in his view of Christianity it formed an important part of the system of revealed truth. It must not be imagined, however, that Mr Barclay slavishly followed, or adopted all Dr Camp- bell's sentiments. Though they were both agreed that a knowledge of the true God was derived from revelation and not from nature, yet they differed upon almost every other point of systematic divinity. Mr Barclay was early, and continued through life to be a high predestinarian, or what is technically deno- minated a snpralapsarian, while Dr Campbell, if one may draw an inference from some of his illustrations, leaned to Arminianism, and doubtless was not a decided Calvinist Mr Barclay having delivered the prescribed discourses with the approbation of the professor of Divinity, he now directed his views to obtain license as a preacher in the establishment, and took the requisite steps. Having delivered the usual series of exercises with the entire approbation of his judges, he was, on the '27th Sep- tember, 1759, licensed by the presbytery of Auchterarder as a preacher of the gos- peL He was not long without employment. Mr Jobson, then minister of Enrol, near Perth, was advanced in years, in an infirm state of health, and required an assistant. Mr Barclay, from his popularity as a preacher, and the reputa- tion he enjoyed through a great part of Perthshire, as well as of Angus and JOHN BARCLAY, A.JI. Me.trns, easily obtained this situation. Here he remained for three or foui years, until n rupture with his principal obliged him to leave it Mr Jobsoi; was what may be called, of the old school. He warmly espoused (as a great many clergymen of the Church of Scotland in those days did), the system of the Marrow of Modern Divinity, a book written by Edward Fisher, an English dis- senter, about the middle of the seventeenth century. This work had ;i vast circulation throughout Scotland. The celebrated Mr Thomas Boston of Ettrick, when visiting his parish ministerially, casually found it in the house of one of his parishioners. He carried it home, was a warm admirer of the system of divinity it contained, and was at the labour of writing notes upon it, Boston's name secured its success among a numerous class of readers. For many years this book occasioned a most serious commotion in the Church of Scotland, which is generally called, " The Marrow Controversy." It was, indeed, the remote cause of that great division, which has since been styled the Secession. But there was another cause for the widening of this unfortunate breach. The well known Mr John Glass, minister of Tealing, near Dundee, had pub- lished in 1727, a work entitled, " The Testimony of the King of Marty re." With the exception of the Cameronians, this gentleman was the first dissenter from the Church of Scotland since the devolution, and it is worthy of remark that the founders of the principal sects were all originally cast out of the church. Mr Glass was an admirer of the writings of the most celebrated English Indepen- dents, (of l)r John Owen in particular) and of their form of church government. Mr Barclay, who was no independent, heartily approved of many of his senti- ments respecting the doctrines of the Gospel, and as decidedly disapproved of others, as shall be mentioned in the sequel. At no time were disputes carried on with greater violence between Christians of different denominations. Mr Barclay had a system of his own, and agreed with none of the parties; but this, if possible, rendered him more obnoxious to Mr Jobson. Much altercation took place between them in private. Mr Barclay publicly declared his sentiments from the pulpit, Mr Jobson did the same in defence of himself, so that a rupture became unavoidable. About the time of Mr Barclay's leaving Errol, Mr Anthony Dow, minister of Fettercairn, in the presbytery of Fordoun, found himself unfit for the fidl discharge of his duties. He desired his son, the Rev. David Dow, then minister of the parish of Dron, in the presbytery of Perth, to use his endeavour to procure him an assistant Mr Dow, who, we believe, was a fellow student of Mr Barclay at St Andrews, was perfectly well acquainted with his talents and character, and the cause of his leaving Errol, immediately made offer to him of being assistant to his father. This he accepted, and he commenced his labours in the beginning of June, 1763. What were Mr Anthony Dow's pecu- liar theological sentiments we do not know, but those of Mr David Dow were not very different from Mr Barclay's. Here he remained for nine years, which he often declared to have been the most happy, and considered to have been the most useful period of his life. Mr Barclay was of a fair, and in his youth, of a very florid complexion. He then looked younger than he really was. The people of Fettercairn were at first greatly prejudiced against him on account of his youthful appearance. But this was soon forgotten. His fervid manner, in prayer especially, and at diffe- rent parts of almost every sermon, rivetted the attention, and impressed the minds of his audience to such a degree, that it was almost impossible to lose the memory of it His popularity as a preacher became so great at Fettercairn, that anything of the like kind is seldom to be met with in the history of the Church of Scotland. The parish church being an old fashioned building, had rafters JOHN BARCLAY, A.M. 143 across ; these were crowded with hearers ; the sashes of the windows were taken out to accommodate the multitude who could not gain admittance. During- the whole period of his settlement at Fettercairn, he had regular hearers who flecked to him fi-om ten or twelve of the neighbouring parishes. If an opinion could be formed of what his manner had been in his youth, and at his prime, from what it was a year or two before he died, it must have been vehement, passion- ate, and impetuous to an uncommon degree. At the time to which we allude, we heard him deliver in his own chapel at Edinburgh, a prayer immediately after the sermon, in which he had alluded to some of the corruptions of the Church of Rome ; the impression it made upon our mind was of the most vivid nature ; and, we are persuaded, was alike in every other member of the congre- gation. The following sentence we distinctly remember, " We pray, we plead, we cry, O Lord, that thou wouldst dash out of the hand of Antichrist, that cup of abominations, wherewith she hath poisoned the nations, and give unto her, and unto them, the cup of salvation, by drinking whereof they may inherit everlast- ing life." But the words themselves are nothing unless they were pronounced with his own tone and manner. During his residence at Fettercairn he did not confine his labours to his public ministrations in the pulpit, but visited from house to house, was the friend and adviser of all who were at the head of a family, and entered warmly into whatever regarded their interests. He showed the most marked attention to children and to youth ; and when any of the household were seized with sick- ness or disease, he spared no pains in giving tokens of his sympathy and ten- derness, and administered consolation to the afflicted. He was very assiduous in discharging those necessary and important duties, which he thought were peculiarly incumbent upon a country clergyman. Such long continued and uninterrupted exertior.s were accompanied with the most happy effects. A taste for religious knowledge, or what is the same, the reading and study of the Bible, began to prevail to a great extent ; the morals of the people were im- proved, and vice and profaneness, as ashamed, were made to hide their heads. Temperance, sobriety, and regularity of behaviour, sensibly discovered them- selves throughout all ranks. Mr Barclay had a most luxuriant fancy, a great liking for poetry, and possess- ed considerable facility of versification. His taste, however, was far from being correct or chaste, and his imagination was little under the management of a sound judgment. Many of his pieces are exceedingly desultory in their nature, but occasionally discover scintillations of genius. The truth probably is, that he neither corrected nor bestowed pains on any of his productions in prose or verse. From the ardour of his mind, they were generally the result of a single effort. At least this appears particularly the case in his shorter poems. He does not seem to have perceived or known that good writing, whether in prose or verse, is an art, and not to be acquired without much labour and practice, as well as a long and repeated revisal of what may have been written. Mr Bar- clay's compositions in both styles, with two or three exceptions, appear to have merely been thrown forth upon the spur of the moment As soon as written, they were deposited among his manuscripts, and, instead of being attentively examined by him, and with a critical eye, were shortly after submitted to the public. Besides his works in prose, he published a great many thousand verses on religious subjects. He had composed a Paraphrase of the whole book of Psalms, part of which was published in 1766. To this was prefixed, " A Dissertation on the best means of interpreting that portion of the canon of Scripture." His views upon this subject were peculiar. He was of opinion that, in all the Psalms which are JOHN BARCLAY, A.M. other mere man, sometimes in the first person, the speaker is Christ, and not David nor any other and that the other Psalms describe the situation of the Church of God, in prosperity, sometimes in adversity, and finally triumphing over all its enemies. This essay is characterized by uncommon vigour of expression, yet in some places with considerable acrimony. The presbytery of Fordoun took great of- fence at this publication, and summoned Mr Barclay to appear at their bar. He did so, and defended himself with spirit and intrepidity. His opinions were not contrary to any doctrine contained in the Confession of Faith, so that he could not even be censured by them. The truth was, that they had taken great offence at the popularity of Mr Barclay as a preacher, and it was only in this way that they could avenge his superiority over themselves. Being disappointed in establishing heresy, their rancour became more violent, and they determined to give him as much annoyance as they possibly could. Even the names of the members of the presbytery of Fordoun are now forgotten. None of them were distinguished for remarkable talents of any kind, and they have long lain mute and inglorious. But at this time they possessed an authority, which they resolv- ed to exercise to the utmost stretch. Having engaged in the invidious and im /" He had t.vo mastiffs placed as sentinels to protect his garden ; and ra- ther than abandon his favourite flowers, chose to continue his residence in an ill- aired and unwholesome situation. This extraordinary genius, who seems to have combined the perfervidum in- genium of his father's country, with the mercurial vivacity of his mother's, died at Kome on the 12th of August, 1 621, in the thirty-ninth year of his age. He left a wife, who had tormented him much with jealousy, (through the ardour of 100 JAMES BASSANTIN (OR BASSANTOUN). ner afTection, as he explained it), besides three children, of whom two were boys. He also left, in the hands of the printer, his celebrated Argents, and also an un- published history of the conquest of Jerusalem, and some fragments of a general history of Europe. He was buried in the church of St Onuphrhis, and his widow erected a monument to him, with his bust in marble, at the church of St Law- rence, on the road to Tivoli. A strange circumstance caused the destruction of this trophy. Cardinal Barberini chanced to erect a monument, exactly similar, ii the same place, to his preceptor, Bernardus Gulienus a monte Sancti Sabini. When the widow of Barclay heard of this, she said, " My husband was a man of birth, and famous in the literary world ; I will not suffer him to remain on a level with a base and obscure pedagogue." She therefore caused the bust to be removed, and the inscription to be obliterated. The account given of the Ar- oenis, by Lord Hailes, who wrote a life of John Barclay as a specimen of a Bio- graphia Scotica* is as follows : " Argenis is generally supposed to be a history under feigned names, and not a romance. Barclay himself contributed to estab- lish this opinion, by introducing some real characters into the work. But that was merely to compliment certain dignitaries of the church, whose good offices he courted, or whose power he dreaded. The key prefixed to Argenis has per. petuated the error. There are, no doubt, many incidents in it that allude to the state of France during the civil wars in the seventeenth century ; but it requires a strong imagination indeed to discover Queen Elizabeth in Hyanisbe, or Henry Ill.of France in Meleander." On the whole, Argenis appears to be a poetical fable, replete with moral and political reflections. Of this work three English translations have appeared, the last in 1772 ; but it now only enjoys the reflective reputation of a work that was once in high repute. We may quote, however, the opinion which Cowper was pleased to express regarding this singular production. " It is," says the poet of Olney, " the most amusing romance that ever was written. It is the only one, indeed, of an old date, that I had ever the patience to go through with. It is interesting in a high degree, richer in incident than can be imagined, full of surprises, which the reader never forestalls, and yet free from entanglement and confusion. The style too, appears to me to be such as would not dishonour Tacitus himself." BASSANTIN, or BASSANTOUN, JAMES, astronomer and mathematician, was the son of the Laird of Bassantin, in Berwickshire, and probably born in the early part of the sixteenth century. Being sent to study at the University of Glasgow, he applied himself almost exclusively to mathematics, to the neglect of languages and philosophy, which Avere then the most common study. In order to prosecute mathematics more effectually than it was possible to do in his own country, he went abroad, and travelled through the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany ; fixing himself at last in France, Avhere for a considerable time he taught his favourite science with high reputation in the University of Paris. In that age, the study of astronomy was inseparable from astrology, and Bassantin became a celebrated proficient in this pretended science, which was then highly cultivated in France, insomuch that it entered more or less into almost all public affairs, and nearly every court in Europe had its astrologer. Bassantin, besides his attainments in astrology, understood the laws of the heavens to an extent which excited the wonder of the age especially, when it was considered that he had scarcely any knowledge of the Greek or Latin lan- guages, in which all that was formerly known of this science had been embodied. But, as may be easily conceived, astronomy was as yet a most imperfect science ; fhe Copernican system, which forms the groundwork of modern astronomy, was not yet discovered or acknowledged ; and all that was really known had 1 Printed in 4to, in 1782, and the groumMvurk of the present s&rtrh. JOHN BASSOL. in time become so inextricably associated with the dreams of astrology, as to be entitled to little respect. Bassantin returned to his native country in 1562, and in passing through England, met with Sir Robert Melville of Mordecairny' who was then engaged in a diplomatic mission from Mary to Elizabeth, for the purpose of bringing about a meeting between the two queens. A curious account of this rencontre is preserved by Sir James Melville in his 3Iemoirs, and, as it is highly illustrative of the character and pretensions of Eassantin, we shall lay it before the reader. " Ane Bassantin, a Scottis man, that had been travelit, and was learnit in Inch scyences, cam to him [Sir Robert Melville] and said, ' Gud gentilman, I hear sa gud report of you that I love you hardy, and there- fore canot forbear to shaw you, how all your upricht dealing and your honest travell will be in vain, where ye believe to obtein a weall for our Quen at the Quen of Englandis handis. You bot tyne your tyme ; for, first, they will never meit togither, and next, there will nevir be bot discembling and secret hattrent for a whyle, and at length captivity and utter wrak for our Quen by England.' 31y brother's answer again was, that he lyked not to heir of sic devilisch newes nor yet wald he credit them in any sort, as false, ungodly, and unlawfull for Christians to inedle them with. Bassantin answered again, ' Gud Mester Mel- vill, tak not that hard opinion of me ; I am a Christian of your religion, and fears God, and purposes never to cast myself in any of the unlawful artis that ye mean of, bot sa far as Melanthon, wha was a Godly theologue, has declared and written anent the iiaturall scyences, that are lawfull and daily red in dyvers < liristian Universities; in the quhilkis, as in all othir artis, God geves to some lss, to some mair and clearer knawledge than till others ; be the quhilk knaw- ledge I have also that at length, that the kingdom of England sail of rycht fall to the crown of Scotland, and that ther are some born at this instant, that sail bruik lands and heritages in England. Bot alace it will cost many their lyves, and many bludy battailes wilbe fouchten first, or [ere] it tak a sattled effect ; and be my knawledge,' said he, ' the Spaniards will be helpers, and will tak a part to themselves for ther labours, quhilk they wilbe laith to leve again.'" If the report of this conference be quite faithful, we must certainly do Bassantin the justice to say, that the most material part of his prophecy came to pass ; though it might be easy for him to see that, as the sovereign 01 Scotland was heiress-presumptive to the crown of England, she or her heirs had a near prospect of succeeding. How Bassantin spent his time in Scotland does not appear; but, as a good protestant, he became a warm supporter of the Earl of Murray, then struggling for the ascendancy. He died in 1563. His works ire, I, A System of Astronomy, published for the third time in 1593, by Johi: Tornuesius. 2, A Treatise of the Astrolabe, published at Lyons in 1555, and reprinted at Paris in 1617. 3, A Pamphlet on the Calculation of Nativities. 4, A Treatise on Arithmetic. 5, Music on the Principles of the Platonists. 6, On Mathematics in general. It is understood that, in the composition of thes>; works, he required considerable literary assistance, being only skilled in his own language, which was never then made the vehicle of scientific discussion. BASSOL, JOHN, a distinguished disciple of the famous Duns Scotus, is stated by Mackenzie to have been born in the reign of Alexander III. He studied under Duns at Oxford, and with him, in 1304, removed to Paris, where he resided some time in the University, and, in 1313, entered the order of the Minorites. After this he was sent by the general of his order to Rheims, where he applied himself to the study of medicine, and taught philosophy for seven or eight years. In 1322, he removed to Mechlin in Brabant, and after teach- ing theology in that city for five and twenty years, died in 1347. only work was one entitled, " Commentaria Seu Lecturae in Quatuor 162 JOHN BAtiiSOL. Libros Senteiitiarum," to which were attached some miscellaneous papers on Philosophy and Medicine. The book was published in folio at Paris, in 15 J 7. Bassol was known by the title, Doctor Ordinatissimus, or the most Methodical Doctor, on account of the clear and accurate method in which he lectured and composed. The fashion of giving such titles to the great masters of the schools ivas then in its prime. Thus, Duns Scotus himself was styled Doctor Subtilis, jr the Subtle Doctor. St Francis of Assis was called the Seraphic Doctor; Alexander Hales the Irrefragable Doctor ; Thomas Aquinas the Angelical Doc- tor ; Hendricus Bonicollius the Solemn Doctor ; Richard Middleton the Solid Doctor ; Francis Mayron the Acute Doctor ; Durandus a S. Portiano the most Resolute Doctor ; Thomas H red ward! n the Profound Doctor ; Joannes Ruys- brokius the Divine Doctor, and so forth ; the title being in every case founded upon some extravagant conception of the merit of the particular individual, adopted by his contemporaries and disciples. In this extraordinary class of literati, John Bassol, as implied by his soubriquet, shines conspicuous for order and method ; yet we are told that his works contain most of the faults which are generally laid to the charge of the schoolmen. The chief of these is an irrational devotion to the philosophy of Aristotle, as expounded by Thomas Aqui- nas. In the early ages of modern philosophy, this most splendid exertion of the human mind was believed to be irreconcileable to the Christian doctrines ; and at the very time when the Angelical Doctor wTote his commentary, it stood prohibited by a decree of Pope Gregory IX. The illustrious Thomas not only restored Aristotle to favour, but inspired his followers with an admiration of his precepts, which, as already mentioned, was not rational. Not less was their ad- miration of the "angelical" commentator, to whom it was long the fashion among them to offer an incense little short of blasphemy. A commentator upon an original work of Thomas Aquinas, endeavours, in a prefatory discourse, to prove, in so many chapters, that he wrote his books not without the special in- fusion of the spirit of God Almighty ; that, in writing them, he received many things by revelation ; and, that Christ had given anticipatory testimony to his writings. By way of bringing the works of St Thomas into direct comparison with the Holy Scriptures, the same writer remarks, " that, as in the first General Councils of the church, it was common to have the Bible unfolded upon the Altar, so, in the last General Council (that of .Trent), St Thomas' 'Sum' was placed beside the Bible, as an inferior rule of Christian doctrine." Peter Labbe, a learned Jesuit, with scarcely less d;iring flattery, styles St Thomas an angel, and says that, as he learned many things from the angels, so he taught the an gels some things; that St Thomas had said what St Paul was not permitted to utter ; and that he speaks of God as if he had seen him, and of Christ as if he tiad been his voice. One might almost suppose that these learned gentlemen, disregarding the sentiment afterwards embodied by Gray, that flattery soothes not the cold ear of death, endeavoured by their praises to make interest with the " angelical" shade, not doubting that he was able to obtain for them a larger share of paradise than they could otherwise hope for. In the words of the au- thor of the Reflections on Learning, " the sainted Thomas, if capable of hearing these inordinate flatteries, must have blushed to receive them." Bassol was also characterised, in common with all the rest of the schoolmen, by a ridiculous nicety in starting questions and objections. Overlooking the great moral aim of what they were expounding, he and his fellows lost them- selves in minute and subtle inquiries after physical exactness, started at every straw which lay upon their path, and measured the powers of the mind by grains and scruples. It must be acknowledged, in favour of this singular class of IUT, that they improved natural reason to a great height, and that much of what ANDREW BAXTER. 1Q3 is most admired in modern philosophy is only borrowed from them. At the same time, their curiosity in raising and prosecuting frivolous objections to the Christian system is to be regretted as the source of much scepticism and irreli- gion. To many of their arguments, ridicule only is due ; and it would perhaps be impossible for the gravest to restrain a smile at the illustrissimo mentioned by Cardan, one of whose arguments was declared to be enough to puzzle aii posterity, and who himself wept in his old age, because he had become unable to understand his own books. The works of Bassol have been long forgotten, like those of his brethren ; but it is not too much to say regarding this great man of a former day, that the same powers of mind which he spent upon the endless intricacies of the school philosophy, would certainly, in another age and sphere, have tended to the permanent advantage of his fellow creatures. He Mas so much admired by his illustrious preceptor, that that great man used to say, " If only Joannes Bassio- lis be present, I have a sufficient auditory." BAXTER, ANDREW, an ingenious moral and natural philosopher, was the son of a merchant in Old Aberdeen, and of Mrs Elizabeth Fraser, a lady connected with some of the considerable families of that name in the north of Scotland. He was boni at Old Aberdeen, in 1686 or 1687, and educated at the King's College, in his native city. His employment in early life was that of a preceptor to young gentlemen ; and among others of his pupils were Lord Gray, Lord Blantyre, and Mr Hay of Drummelzier. In 1723, while resident atDunse Castle, as preceptor to the last-mentioned gentleman, he is known, from letters which passed between him and Henry Home, afterwards Lord Kaimes, to have been deeply engaged in both physical and metaphysical disquisitions. As Mr Home's paternal seat of Kaimes was situated within a few miles of Dunse Castle, the si- milarity of their pursuits appears to have brought them into an intimate friend- ship and correspondence. This, however, was soon afterwards broken offi Mr Home, who was a mere novice in physics, contended with Mr Baxter that mo- tion was necessarily the result of a succession of causes. The latter endeavoured, at first with much patience and good temper, to point out the error of this ar- gument ; but, teased at length with what he conceived to be sophistry purposely employed by his antagonist to show his ingenuity in throwing doubts on princi- ples to which he himself annexed the greatest importance, and on which he had founded what he believed to be a demonstration of those doctrines most material to the happiness of mankind, he finally interrupted the correspondence, saying, " I shall return you all your letters; mine, if not already destroyed, you may likewise return; we shall burn them and our philosophical heats together." About this time, Mr Baxter married Alice Mabane, daughter of a respectable clergyman in Berwickshire. A few years afterwards he published his great work, entitled, " An Enquiry into the nature of the Human Soul, wherein its immateriality is evinced from the principles of Reason and Philosophy." This ork was originally without date ; but a second edition appeared in 1737, and a third in 1745. It has been characterised in the highest terms of panegyric by Bishop Warburton. " He who would see," says this eminent prelate, " the justest and precisest notions of God and the soul, may read this book ; one o the most finished of the kind, in my humble opinion, that the present times, greatly advanced in true philosophy, have produced." The object of the trea- tise is to prove the immateriality, and consequently the immortality of the soul, from the acknowledged principle of the vis inertia of matter. His argument, according to the learned Lord Woodhouselee, is as follows: " There is a resis- tance to any change of its present state, either of rest or motion, essential to matter, which is inconsistent with its possessing any active power. Those, there- ANDHEW BAXTER. fore, which have been called the natural powers of matter, as gravity, attraction, elasticity, repulsion, are not powers implanted in matter, or possible to be made inherent in it, but are impulses or forces impressed upon it ab extra. The consequence of the want of active power in matter is, that all those effects com- monly ascribed to its active powers, must be produced upon it by an immaterial being. Hence we discover the necessity for the agency of a constant and uni- versal Providence in the material world, who is GOD ; and hence we must admit the necessity of an immaterial mover in all spontaneous motions, which is the Soul ; for that which can arbitrarily effect a change in the present state of matter, cannot be matter itself, which resists all change of its present state : and since this change is effected by willing, that thing which wills in us is net mat- ter, but an immaterial substance. From these fundamental propositions, the author deduces as consequences, the necessary immortality of the soul, as being a simple uncompounded substance, and thence incapable of decay, and its capa- city of existing, and being conscious when separated from the body." In 1741, leaving his family in Berwick, he went abroad with his pupil Mr Hay, and resided for several years at Utrecht. In the course of various excursions which he made through Holland, France, and Germany, he was generally well received by the literati. He returned to Scotland in 1747, and, till his death in 1750, resided constantly at Whittingham in East Lothian, a seat of his pupil Mr Hay. His latter works were, " Matho, sive CosmotheorSa puerilis, Dialogus," a piece designed for the use of his pupil, and, " An Appendix to his Enquiry into the nature of the human soul," wherein he endeavoured to remove some difficulties, which had been started against his notions of the vis inertias of matter by Maclaurin, in his " Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries " In 1779, the Rev. Dr Duncan of South Warnborough published, " The evidence of reason in proof of the Immortality of the Soul, independent on the more abstruse enquiry into the nature of matter and spirit collected from the MSS. of the late Mr Baxter." The learning and abilities of Mr Baxter are sufficiently displayed in his writings, which, however, were of more note in the literary world during his own time than now. He was very studious, and sometimes sat up whole nights read- ing and writing. His temper was cheerful ; he was a friend to innocent merri- ment, and of a disposition truly benevolent In conversation he was modest, and not apt to make much show of the extensive knowledge he possessed. In the discharge of the several social and relative duties of life, his conduct was exemplary. He had the most reverential sentiments of the Deity, of whose presence and immediate support, he had always a strong impression upon his mind. He paid a strict attention to economy, though he dressed elegantly, and was not parsimonious in his other expenses. It is known also that there were several occasions on which he acted with remarkable disinterestedness ; and so far was he from courting preferment, that he repeatedly declined offers of that kind that were made to him, on the condition of his taking orders in the Church of England. The French, German, and Dutch languages were spoken by him with much ease, and the Italian tolerably; and he read and wrote them all, together with the Spanish. His friends and correspondents were numerous and respectable ; among them are particularly mentioned, Mr Pointz, preceptor to the Duke of Cumberland, and Bishop Warburton. While travelling on the Con- tinent, he had formed an intimate friendship with the celebrated John Wilkes ; and he accordingly dedicated to this gentleman his Appendix to the Enquiry. After the death of Mr Baxter, Mr Wilkes published a remarkably interesting letter, the last but one which he had received from his friend, exhibiting in a very striking manner the deep impression which the excellent principles of M> JAMES BAYNE (OB, BAINE). Baxter had made upon his own mind, and which were oniythe more deeply and confidently cherished as life approached its close. " As to the state of my dis- ease," says the dying philosopher, " unless I would make suppositions contrary to all probability, I hare no reasonable hopes of recovery, the swelling which began at my legs, being now got up to my belly and head. I am a trouble to all about me, especially to my poor wife, who has the life of a slave night and day, helping me to take care of my diseased frame. Yet I may linger on a while, as I can still walk a little through the room, and divert myself now and then with reading, nay, in writing down my remarks on what I read. But I can with sincerity assure you, my most dear Mr Wilkes, death has nothing ter- rible to me ; or rather I look upon it with pleasure. I have long and often considered and uritten down the advantages of a separate state. I shall soon know more than all the men I leave behind me ; wonders in material nature and the world of spirits, which never entered into the thoughts of philosophers. The end of knowledge then, is not to get a name, or form a new sect, but to adore the power and wisdom of the Deity. This kills pride, but heightens hap- piness and pleasure. All our rational desires, because rational, must be satisfied by a being, himself infinitely rational I have been long aware that nothing can go beyond the grave, but habits of virtue and innocence. There is no dis- tinction in that world, but what proceeds from virtue or vice. Titles and riches are laid off when the shroud goes on." [Mr Baxter then goes on to express his conviction that even the punishments which may be awarded in a future state will only be " to correct and make better."] " Besides, what is it to be free from the pains and infirmities of the body though I am satisfied just now, that the weakness of my distressed limbs is as much the immediate effect of the same power and goodness, as their growth and strength was sixty years ago ! Dare I add a word without being thought vain ? This is owing to my having reasoned honestly on the nature of that dead substance, matter. It is as utterly inert when the tree flourishes, as when the leaf withers. And it is the same divine power, differently applied, that directs the last parting throb, and the first drawing breath. O the blindness of those who think matter can do any thing of itself, or perform an effect without impulse or direction from superior power!" BAYNE, [or BAIXE] JAMES, A. M. a divine of some note, M - as the sen of the Rev. Mr Bayne, minister of Bonhill in Dumbartonshire, and was born in 1710. His education commenced at the parish school, was completed at the university of Glasgow, and in due time he became a licensed preacher of the established church of Scotland. In consequence of the respectability of his father, and his own talents as a preacher, he was presented by the Duke of Montrose to the church of Killearn, the parish adjoining that in which his father had long ministered the gospel, and memorable as the birth-place of Bucbanan. In this sequester- ed and tranquil seen* 1 , he spent many years, which he often referred to in after I ife as the happiest he had ever known. He here married Miss Potter, daughtei of Dr Michael Potter, professor of divinity in the Glasgow university, by whom he had a large family. His son, the Rev. James Bayne, was licensed in the Scot- tish establishment, but afterwards received episcopal ordination, and died in the exercise of that profession of faith at Alloa. The reputation of Mr Bayne as a preacher soon travelled far beyond the rural scene to which his ministrations were confined. His people, in allusion to the musical sweetness of his voice, honoured him with the poetical epithet of " the swan of the west." He was appointed to a collegiate charge in the High Church of Paisley, where his partner in duty was the celebrated Mr Wotherspoon, afterwards president of the Nassau Hall College, Princetown, New Jersey. The two colleagues, however, 106 JAMES BAYNE (OR BAINE). did not co-operate harmoniously, although both enjoyed a high degree of popularity. Mr Bavne displayed great public spirit during his connection with the Established church, defending her spiritual liberties and independence in the church courts, and offering a determined opposition to the policy of the moderate or ruling party. The deposition of Mr Thomas Gillespie, of Carnock, the founder of the Relief church, made a powerful impression on his mind, and undoubtedly had a strong influence in inducing him to resign his pastoral charge in Paisley. But the immediate cause of that resolution was a keen dispute which took place in the kirk-session of his parish, respecting the appointment of a session-clerk. The session contested the right of appointment with the town-council ; the whole community took an interest in the dispute; and the case came at last to be litigated in the Court or Session, which decided in favour of the town-council. Unhappily, Mr Bayne and his colleague took opposite sides in this petty contest, and a painful misunderstanding was produced betwixt them, followed by consequences probably affecting the future destinies of both. Mr Bayne refers to these differences in his letter of resignation, addressed to the Pres- bytery, dated 10th February, KG6 : " They (the Presbytery) know not. how far I am advanced in life, who see not that a house of worship, so very large as the High Church, and commonly so crowded too, must be very unequal to my strength ; and this burden was made more heavy by denying me a .essiori to assist me in the com- mon concerns of the parish, which 1 certainly had a title to. But the load became quite intolerable, when, by a late unhappy process, the just and natural right of the common session was wrested from us, which drove away from acting in it twelve men of excellent character." Mr Bayne joined the Relief church, then in its infancy, having, even whilst in the Establishment, held ministerial communion with Mr Simpson, minister of Bellshill congregation, the first Relief church in the west of Scotland. In his letter of resignation, already quoted, Mr Bayne assured his former brethren that the change of his condition, and the charge he had accepted, would make no change in his creed, nor in his principles of Christian and ministerial communion " Nay (he adds), none in my cordial regard to the constitution and interests of the Church of Scotland, which I solemnly engaged to support some more than thirty years ago, and hope to do so while I live. At the same time I abhor persecution in every form, and that abuse of church power of late, which to me appears inconsistent with humanity, with the civil interests of the nation, and destructive of the ends of our office as ministers of Christ." On the 24th December, Mr Bayne accepted a call to become minister of the College Street Relief Church, Edinburgh, and his induction took place on the 13th February, 1T66, three days after his resignation of his charge in Paisley. As his demission fell to be adjudicated upon by the General Assembly, in May of that year, his name remained for the present upon the roll of the Establishment, and so little did he yet consider himself separated from the communion of that church, that when the half-yearly sacrament of the Lord's Supper came round in Edinburgh, soon after his settlement, after preaching in his own church in the forenoon, he went over in the afternoon, at the head of his congregation, to the New Greyfriars' church, and joined in the ordinance with the congregation of the Rev. Dr Erskine. At the Assembly in May, Mr Bayne, in obedience to a citation, appeared at the bar, and was declared to be no longer a minister of the Church of Scotland, and all clergymen of that body were prohibited from holding ministerial communion with him. Mr Bayne defended the course he had taken in a review of the proceedings of the Assembly, entitled, "Memoirs of Modern Church Reforma- tion, or the History of the General Assembly, 1766, and occasional reflections upon the proceedings of said Assembly ; with a brief account and vindication of the Presbytery ot Relief, by James Bayne, A.M., minister of the gospel at Edinburgh." He denounces, with indignant severity, the injustice of his having been condemned by SHOP OF S T AHIUlEWS,&r.,?-c. . FROM -HOOP -HOUSE . CARDINAL BEATON. 1G7 the Assembly without a libel, merely for having accepted a charge in another church, ' in which (says he), I presumed, they could find nothing criminal ; for often had minister* resigned their charge upon different accounts, and justifiable; nav some have given it up for the more entertaining a , ld elegant employ of the stage, who were ot called in question or found delinquents. This was a palpable hit at Home the author of Douglas," who sat in the AssemUy as a ruling elder, to aid Dr Robertson in punishing Bayne. After a ministry of CO years, Mr Bayne died at Edinburgh on the 17th January, 1790, in his eightieth year. He was 24 years minister of 'the College Street Relief congregation, Edinburgh. His popularity as a preacher, his talents for ecclesiastical affairs, his acquirements as a scholar and a theologian and his sound judgment and weight of character, gave him great influence; and it was mainly to his large and enlightened views that the Relief church was indebted for the position to which it attained, even during his lifetime, as well as for retaining, till it was finally merged in the United Presbyterian church, the catho- lic constitution on which it had been founded by Gillespie and Boston.' Mr Bayne was an uncompromising opponent of whatever he considered to be a violation of public morality. In 1770 he published a discourse, entitled, "The Theatre Licen- tious and Perverted," administering a stern rebuke to Mr Samuel Foote for his Minor; a drama, in which the characters of Whitefield, and other zealous minis- ters were held up to profane ridicule. The dramatist considered it necessary to reply to Mr Bayne's strictures, in an " Apology for the Minor, in a letter to the Rev. Mr Bayne," resting his defence upon the plea that he only satirized the vices and follies of religious pretenders. A volume of Mr Bayne's discourses was published iu 1778. BEATON, or BEATOUN (CARDINAL) DAVID, who held the rectory of Campsie, the abbacy of Aberbrothick, the bishopric of Mirepoix in France, the cardinalship of St Stephen in Monte Coalio, and the chancellorship of Scotland, and who was the chief of the Roman Catholic party in Scotland in the earlier age of the reformation, was descended from an ancient family in Fife, possessed of the barony of Balfour, and was born in the year 1494. He was educated at the college of St Andrews, where he completed his courses of polite literature and philosophy, but was sent afterwards to the university of Paris, where he studied divinity for several rears. Entering into holy orders, he had the rectory of Campsie and the abbacy of Aber- brothick bestowed upon him, by his uncle, James Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrew's, who retained one-half of the rents of the abbacy to his own use. Possessing good abilities and a lively fancy, David Beaton became a great favourite with James V , who, in 1519, sent him to reside as his ambassador at the court of France. He returned to Scotland in 1525, and, still growing in the King's favour, was, ifi 1528 made lord privy seal. In the year 1533, he was again sent on a mission to the French court. Beaton on this occasion was charged to refute certain calumnies which it was supposed the English had circulated against his countrymen, to study the preserva- tion of the ancient league between the two nations, and to conclude a treaty of marriage between James am] Magdalene, the daughter of Francis I. If unsuccessful in any of these points, he was furnished with letters which he was to deliver to the parliament at Paris, and depart immediately for Flanders, for the purpose of forming an alliance with the emperor. In every part of his embassy, Beaton seems to have succeeded to the utmost extent of his wishes, the marriage excepted, which Was delayed on account of the declining state of health in which Magdalene then was. How long Beaton remained at the French court at this time has not been ascertained ; but it is certain that he was exceedingly agreeable to Francis, who, perceiving his great abilities, and aware of the influence he possessed over the mind [(J8 CARDINAL B BATON. of the Scottish King, used every expedient to attach him to the interests of France, being afraid of the predilection of James towards his uncle, Henry VIII., who also, he was aware, was strengthening, by all the influence he possessed, his interest at the Scottish court. In 1536, finding a second embassy also unsuccessful, king James set sail for France, and proceeded to the court, where he was most cordially welcomed ; and, unable to deny his suit, especially as it was exceedingly agreeable to Magdalene herself, Francis consented to their union, which was celebrated with great rejoicings on the 1st of January, 1537. On the 28th of May following, the royal pair landed in Scotland, being conveyed by a French Meet. Magdalene was received by the Scottish nation with the utmost cor- diality ; but she was already far gone in a decline, and died on the 7th of July following, to the inexpressible grief of the whole nation. It was on the death of this queen that mournings were first worn in Scotland. James, how- ever, in expectation of this event, had fixed his attention upon Mary of Guise, widow of the Duke of Longueville ; and Beaton, who by this time had returned to Scotland, was dispatched immediately to bring her over. On this occasion he was appointed by the king of France bishop of Mirepoix, to which see he was consecrated, December 5th, 1537. The following year, he was, at the recommendation of the French king, elevated to the cardinalship by the I'ope, which was followed by a grant on the part of the French king for services already done and for those which he might afterwards do to his majesty, allowing his heirs to succeed him to his estate in France, though the said heirs should be born and live within the kingdom of Scotland, and though they should have no particular letter or act of naturalization in that country. Notwithstanding of the obligations he was thus laid under by the king of France, he returned to Scot- land with Mary of Guise, and shortly after obtained the entire management of the diocese and primacy of St Andrews, under his uncle James Beaton, whom he eventually succeeded in that office. A severe persecution was commenced at this time by the cardinal against all who were suspected of favouring the reformed doctrines. Many were forced to recant, and two persons, Norman Gourlay and David Straiton, were burnt at the Hood of Greenside, near Edinburgh. The pope, as a further mark of his re- pect, and to quicken his zeal, declared Beaton Legatus a Ictlerc ; and l.o, to manifest his gratitude, brought to St Andrews the earls of Huntley, Arran, Marischal, and Montrose, the lords of Fleming, Lindsay, Erskine, and Seaton, Gavin archbishop of Glasgow (chancellor), William bishop of Aberdeen, Henr\ bishop of Galloway, John bishop of Brechin, and William bishop of Dumblane, the abbots of Melrose, Dunfermline, Luidores, and Kinloss, with a multitude o : priors, deans, doctors of divinity, &c. , all of whom being assembled in the cathe- dral church, he harangued them from his chair of state on the dangers that hung over the true catholic church from the proceedings of king Henry in England, and particularly from the great increase of heresy in Scotland, where it had long been spreading, and found encouragement even in the court of the king. As he pro- ceeded, he denounced Sir John Borthwick, provost of Linlithgow, as one of the most industrious incendiaries, and caused him to be cited before them for maintaining (hat the Pope had no greater authority over Christians than any ether bishop or prelate that indulgences granted by the pope were of no force or effect, but devised to amuse the people and deceive poor ignorant souls that bishops, priests, and other clergymen, may lawfully marrythat the heresies commonly called the heresies of England and their new liturgy were to be commended !,y ill good Christians, and to be embraced by them that the people of Scotland re blinded by their clergy, and profess not the true faiththat diurchiuei, CARDINAL BI;ATON. 169 ought not to enjoy any temporalities that the king oi^ght to convert the super- duous revenues of the church unto other pious uses that the church of Scotland ought to be reformed after the same manner as that of England Avas that the Cation law was of no force, being contrary to the Law of God that the orders of friars and monks should be abolished, as had been done in England that lie had openly called the pope a Simoniac, because he had sold spiritual things that he had read heretical books and the Xew Testament in English, with treatises o ~ written by 3ielanchth.ni, (Ecolampadius, and other heretics, and that he not only read them himself but distributed them among others and lastly, that he openly ilisowued the authority of the Roman see. These articles being read, and Sir .Tohn neither appearing himself nor any person for him, he was set down as a confessed heretic, and condemned as an heresiarch. His goods were ordered to be confiscated and himself burnt in effigy, if he could not be apprehended, and all manner of persons forbidden to entertain or converse with him, under the pain of excommunication or forfeiture. This sentence was p:issed against him on the 2oth of 31ay. and executed the same day so far as was in the power of the court, his effigy being burnt in the market place of St Andrews and two days after at Edinburgh. This was supposed by many to be intended as a gratifying spectacle to Mary of Guise, the new queen, who had only a short time before arrived from France. Sir John Borthwick, in the meantime, being informed of these violent proceedings, fled into England, where he was received with open arms by Henry VIII., by whom he was sent on an embassy to the protestant princes of Germany, for the purpose of forming with them a defensive league against the pope. Johnston, in his Heroes of Scotland, says, that " John Borth- wick, a noble knight, was as much esteemed by king James V. for his exem- plar and amiable qualities, as he Avas detested by the order of the priesthood on account of his true piety, for his unfeigned profession of which he Avas con- demned ; and though absent, his effects confiscated, and his effigy, after being subjected to various marks of ignominy, burnt " as AVC have above related. " This condemnation," Johnston adds, " he answered by a most learned apology, which may yet be seen in the records of the martyrs, [Fox,] and having survived many years, at last died in peace in a good old age." While these affairs were transacted, Henry, anxious to destroy that inter- est which the French government had so long maintained in Scotland to the prejudice of England, sent into that kingdom the bishop of St Davids \vith some books Avritten in the vulgar tongue upon the doctrines of Chris- tianity, which lie recommended to his nephew carefully to peruse, and to weigh Avell their contents. James, who Avas more addicted to his amusements, than to the study of the doctrines and duties of Christianity, gave the books to be perused by some of his courtiers, who, being attached to the clerical order, condemned them as heretical, and congratulated the king upon hav- ing so fortunately escaped the contamination of his royal eyes by such pesti- ferous Avritings. There Avere, however, other matters proposed to the king by this embassy than the books, though it was attempted by the clerical faction to persuade the people that the books Avere all that was intended : for, shortly after, the same bishop, accompanied by William Howard, brother of the Duke of Nor- folk, came to the king at Stirling so suddenly, that he Avas not aware of their coming till they Avere announced as arrived in the town. This no doubt Avas planned by Henry to prevent the intriguing of the priests and the French faction beforehand. His offers Avere of a nature so advantageous, that James acceded to them without any scruple, and readily agreed to meet with his uncle Henry on -in appointed day, Avhen they were to settle all matters in dependence be- CARDINAL BEATON. ween them for the welfare of both kingdoms. Nothing could be more terrible TO the clergy, of which Beaton was now confessedly the head in Scotland, than the agreement of the two kings ; they saw in it nothing short of the loss of all that was dear to them, their altars, their revenues, and of course their influence, and they hastened to court from all quarters to weep over their religion about to be betrayed by an unholy conference, which, being impious in its purposes, could not fail, they said, to end in the ruin of the kingdom. Having by these representations made a strong impression upon the king, who was ignorant and superstitious, they then bribed, by the promise of large sums of money, the cour- aers who had the most powerful influence over him, to dissuade him from the lourney he had promised to make into England, which they successfully did, and so laid the foundation of a quarrel which ended in a war, die disastrous issue of which, preying upon the mind of James, brought him to an untimely end. In the whole of these transactions, Beaton, a zealous churchman and the hired tool of France, was the chief actor, and knowing that the king was both cove- tous and needy, h overcame his scruples, by persuading the clergy to promise him a yearly subsidy of thirty thousand gold crowns, and even their whole fortunes, if this should be thought necessary. As he had no design, however, to be at any unne- cessary expense himself, nor meant to be burdensome to bis brethren, he pointed out the estates of those who rebelled against the authority of the Pope and the ma- jesty of the king as proper subjects for confiscation, whereby there might be raised annually the sum of one hundred thousand crowns of gold. In order to attain this object, he requested that, for himself and his brethren, they might only be allowed to name, as they were precluded themselves from sitting in judgment in criminal cases, a lord chief justice, before whom, were he once appointed, there could be neither difficulty in managing the process, nor delay in procuring judg- ment, since so many men hesitated not to read the books of the New and Old Testa- ments, to discuss and disown the power of the Pope, to contemn the ancient rites of the church, and, instead of reverencing and obeying, dared to treat with deri- sive contempt those individuals that had been consecrated to God, and whose business it was to guide them in their spiritual concerns. This wicked counsel, as it suited both the inclinations and the necessities of the king, was quickly complied with, and they nominated for this new court of inquisition a judge every- way according to their own hearts, James Hamilton, (a natural brother of the Earl of Arran,) whom they had attached to their interests by large gifts, and who was willing to be reconciled to the king, whom he had lately oftended, by any service, however cruel The suspicions which the king entertained against his nobility from this time forward were such as to paralyze his efforts whether for good or evil. The inroads of the English, too, occupied his whole attention, and the shame- f'll overthrow of his army which had entered England by the Solway, threw him into such a state of rage and distraction, that his health sunk under it, and he died at Falkland on the 13th of December, 1542, leaving the king- dom, torn by faction, and utterly defenceless, to his only surviving legitimate child, Mary, then no more than five days old. The sudden demise of the king, while it quashed the old projects of the Cardinal, only set him upon forming new ones still more daring and dangerous. Formerly he had laboured to direct the movements of die king by humouring his passions, flattering his vanity, and administering to his vicious propensities. Now, from the infancy ot die successor, die death, die captivity, or the exile of the most influential part >t die nobility, and the distracted state of the nation in general, he conceived that it would be easy for him to seize upon the government, which he might now administer for the infant queen, solely to his own mind. Accordingly, with the CARDINAL BEATON. 171 assistance of one Henry Balfour, a mercenary priest, whom he suborned, he is said to have forged a will for die king, in which he was himself nominated agent, with three of the nobility as his assessors or assistants. According to Knox, these wre Argyle, Huntley, and Murray ; but Buchanan, whom we think a very suf- ficient authority in this case, says that he also assumed as an assessor his cousin by the mother's side, the Earl of Arran, who was, after Mary, the next heir to the crown, but was believed to be poorly qualified by the humbler virtues for discharging the duties of a private life, and still less fitted either by courage or capacity 1'or directing the government of a kingdom. Aware of the danger that might arise from delay, the cardinal lost not a moment in idle deliberation. The will which he had forged he caused to be proclaimed at the cross of Edinburgh on the Monday immediately succeeding the king's death. Arran, the unambitious presumptive heir to the throne, would, had he been left to himself, have peaceably acquiesced in the cardinal's arrange- ments, for he had the approbation of the queen mother, and, by presents and promises, had made no inconsiderable party among the nobility. But iiis friends, the Hamiltons, says Buchanan, more anxious for their own aggrandizement than for his honour, incessantly urged him not to let such an occasion slip out of his hands, for they would rather have seen the whole kingdom in flames than have been obliged to lead obscure lives in private sta- tions. Hatred, too, to the Cardinal, who, from his persecuting and selfish spirit, was very generally detested, and the disgrace of living in bondage to a priest, procured them many associates. The near prospect which Arran now had of succeeding to the crown, must also have enlisted a number of the more wary and calculating politicians upon his side. But what was of still more con- sequence to him, Henry of England who had carried all the principal prisoners taken in the late battle to London, marched them in triumph tlirough that me- tropolis, and given them in charge to his principal nobility, no sooner heard of the death of the king than ho recalled the captives to court, entertained them in the most friendly manner, and having taken a promise from each of them that they would promote as far as possible, without detriment to the public interests, or disgrace to themselves, a marriage between his son and the young queen, he sent them back to Scotland, where they arrived on the 1st of January, 1543. Along with the prisoners the Earl of Angus and his brother were restored to their coun- try, after an exile of fifteen years, and all were received by the nation with the most joyful granulations. It was in vain that the Cardinal had already taken possession of the regency. Arran, by the advice of the Laird of Grange, called an assem- bly of the nobility, whicli finding the will upon which the Cardinal had as- assumed the regency forged, set him aside and elected Arran in his place. This was peculiarly grateful to a great proportion of the nobles, three hundred of whom, with Arran at their head, were found in a proscription list among the king's papers, furnished to him by the Cardinal Arran, it was well known, was friendly to the reformers, and his imbecility of mind being unknown, the greatest expectations were formed from the moderation of his character. In tho parliament that met in the month of March following, public affairs put on a much more promising appearance than could have been expected. The king of England, instead of an army to waste or to subjugate the country, sent an am- bassador to negociate a marriage between the young queen and his son, and a lasting peace upon the most advantageous terms. The Cardinal, who saw m this alliance with protestant England the downfall of his church in Scotland, opposed himself, with the whole weight of the clergy at his back, and all the influence of the Queen-dowager, to every thing like pacific measures, and that with so 172 CARDINAL BEATO.V. much violence, that lie was by the general consent of the house shut up in a te chamber, while the votes were taken; after which every thing wr-s I in the most amicable manner, and it was agreed that hostages should 'p sent into I upland for the fulfilment of the stipulated articles. '['he Cardinal in the meantime was committed as a prisoner into the hands of Lc.nl Seton, who kept him first in Dalkeith, afterwards in Seton, and by and bye, something being bestowed on Lord Seton and the old Laird of I ethino-ton y of compensation, he was suffered to resume his own castle at St Andrews. in the great confusion and uncertainty in public affairs that had prevailed for a number of years, trade had been at an entire stand, and now that a lasting peace seemed to be established, the merchants began to bestir themselves in all quar- ters, and a number of vessels were sent to sea laden with the most valuable mer- chandise. Edinburgh itself fitted out twelve, and the othfcr towns on the eas- tern coast in proportion to their wealth, all of them coasting the English shows and entering their harbours with the mcst tmdoubting confidence. Restored ' however, to liberty, the Cardinal, enraged at the opposition he had encountered' and writhing under the disgrace of detected fraud, strained every nerve to break np the arrangements that had been so happily concluded. Seconded by the Queen-douager, who, like him, hated the Douglasses, and trembled for the established religion, any change in which would necessarily involve a rupture of the ancient treaty with France, he convoked, at St Andrews, soon after his re- turn to that place, an assembly of the clergy, to determine upon a certain sum of money to be given by them in case their measures for the preservation of the catholic church should involve the country in a war with England. The whole of the bishops not being present, the meeting was adjourned to the month of June ; but the Cardinal had the address to prevail on those that were present to give all their own money, their silver plate, and the plate belonging to their lurches, for the maintainance of such a war, besides engaging to enter them- selves into the army as volunteers, should such a measure be thought necessary Aided by this money, with which he wrought upon the avarice and the poverty of the nobles ami excited the clamours of the vulgar, who hated the very name f an English alhance, the Cardinal soon found himself at the head of a for Hdable party, which treated the English ambassador with the greatest haughti" i the hope of forcing him out of the country before the arrival of the dav imbat tIlB treaty '" th * lle regent f r the deUvei 7 of Ule Postages. The the regent, and complained in strong terms of the manner in'whid! ht hadlbec "sed, and the affronts that had been put, not upon himself only, but ponWs 'aster , contempt of the law of nature and of nations, but at the sin demanded the fulfilment of the treaty and the.i CARDINAL BEATON. 173 same time seized upon all the Scottish vessels, a great number of which had been lately fitted out, as we have stated, and were at this time in the English harbour and road-steads, confiscated the merchandise, and made the merchants and the m?rriners prisoners of war. This, while it added to the domestic miseries of Scotland, served also to fan the flames of dissension, which burned more fiercely than ever. The faction of the Cardinal and the Queen-dowager, entirely de- voted to France, now sent ambassadors thither to state their case as utterly des- perate, unless they were supported from that country. In particular, they re- quested that Matthew Earl of Lennox might be ordered home, in order 'that they might set him up as a rival to the Hamiltons, who were already the objects of his hatred, oii account of their having waylaid and killed his father at Linlithgow. Arran laboured to strengthen his party in the best manner he could ; and for this end resolved to possess himself of the infant Queen, who had hitherto re- mained at Linlithgow in the charge of her mother the Queen-dowager. The Cardinal, however, was too wary to be thus circumvented, and assembling his faction, took possession of Linlithgow, where he lived at free quarters upon the inhabitants, on pretence of being a guard to the Queen. Lennox, in the mean- time, arrived from France, and was received by the regent with great kindness each of them dissembling the hatred he bore to the other, and having informed his friends of the expectations he had been led to form he proceeded to join the Queen at Linlithgow, accompanied by upwards of four thousand men. Arran who had assembled all his friends in and about Edinburgh for the purpose of breaking through to the Queen, now found himself completely in the back ground, having, by the imbecility of his character, entirely lost the confidence of the people, and being threatened with a law-suit by the friends of Lennox to deprive him of his estates, his father having married his mother, Janet Beaton an aunt of the Cardinal, while his first wife, whom he had divorced was still alive. He now thought of nothing but making his peace with the Cardinal. To this the Cardinal was not at all averse, as he wished to make Arran his tool ra- ther than to crush him entirely. Delegates of course were appointed by both parties, who met at Kirkliston, a village about midway between Edinburgh and Linlithgow, and agreed that the Queen should be carried to Stirling; the Earl of Montrose, with the Lords Erskine, Lindsay, ami Livingstone, being nominated to take the superintendence of her education. Having been put in possession of the infant Queen, tbese noblemen proceeded with her direct to Stirling Castle, where she w.is solemnly inaugurated with the usual ceremonies on the 9th of Sept 1 5 13. The feeble regent soon followed, and before the Queen-mother and the principal nobility in th-j church of the Franciscans at Stirling, solemnly abjured the protestant doctrines, by the profession of which alone he had obtained the favour of so large a portion of the nation, and for the protection of which he had been especially called to the regency. In this manner the Cardinal, through the cowardice of the regent, and the avarice of his friends, obtained all that he intended by the forged will, and enjoyed all the advantages of ruling, while all the odium that attended it attached to the imbecile Arran, who was now as much hated and despised by his own party as he had formerly been venerated by them. There was yet, however, one thing wanting to establish the power of the Cardi- nal the dismissal of Lennox, who, though he had been greatly useful to them in humbling Arran, was now a serious obstacle in the way of both the Cardinal and the Queen-mother. They accordingly wrote to the king of France, entreat- ing that, as Scotland had been restored to tranquillity by his liberality and assis- tance, he would secure his own good work and preserve the peace which he had procured, by recalling Lennox, without which it was impossible it could be lastinf. 174 CARDINAL BEATON. Though they were thus secretly labouring to undermine this nobleman, the Queen-mother and the Cardinal seemed to study nothing so much as how they might put honour upon him before the people, and in the most effective manner contribute to his comfort By a constant succession of games and festivals, the court presented one unbroken scene of gaiety and pleasure. Day after day was spent in tournaments, and night after night in masquerades. In these festivities, of which he was naturally fond, Lennox found a keen rival in James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwcll, who had been banished by James "V., but had returned aftei his decease, and was now labouring to obtain the Queen-dowager in marriage by the same arts that Lennox fancied himself to be so successfully employing. Both these noblemen were remarkable for natural endowments, and in the gifts of fortune they were nearly upon a level Finding himself inferior, however, in the sportive strife of arms, Bothwell withdrew from the court in chagrin, leav- ing the field to his rival undisputed. Lennox, now fancying that he had no- thing more to do than to reap the harvest of fair promises that had been so liberally held forth to him, pressed his suit upon the Queen, but learned with astonishment that she had no intention of taking him for a husband, and so far from granting him the regency, she had agreed with the Cardinal to preserve it in the possession of his mortal enemy Arran, whom they expected to be a more pliant tool to serve their own personal views and purposes. Exasperated to the highest degree, Lennox swore to be amply revenged, but uncertain as yet what plan to pursue, departed tor Dunbarton, where he was in the midst of his vassals and friends. Here he received thirty thousand crowns, sent to increase the strength of his party by the king of France, who had not yet been informed of the real state of Scotland. Being ordered to consult with the Queen-dowager and the Cardinal in the distribution of this money, Lennox divided part of it among his friends, and part he sent to the Queen. The Cardinal, who had expected to have been intrusted with the greatest share of the money, under the influence of rage and disappointment, persuaded the vacillating regent to raise an army and march to Glasgow, where he might seize upon Lennox and the money at the same time. Lennox, however, warned of their intentions, raised on the instant among his vassals and friends upwards of ten thousand men, with which he marched to Leith, and sent a message to the Cardinal at Edinburgh, that he de- sired to save him the trouble of coming to fight him at Glasgow, and would give him that pleasure any day in the fields between Edinburgh and Leith. This was a new and unexpected mortification to the Cardinal, who, having gained the regent, imagined he should have gained the whole party that adhered to him ; but the fact was, he had gained only the regent and his immediate dependants, the great body of the people, who had originally given him weight and influence, being now so thoroughly disgusted with his conduct, that they had joined the standard, and now swelled the ranks of his rival. The Cardinal, however, though professing the utmost willingness to accept the challenge, delayed coming to action from day to day under various pretexts, but in reality that he might have time to seduce the adherents of his rival, and weary out the patience of his followers, who, without pay and without magazines, he was well aware could not be kept for any length of time together. Lennox, finding the war thus protracted, and himself so completely unfurnished for undertaking a siege, at the urgent, entreaty of his friends, who for the most part had provided se- cretly for themselves, made an agreement with the regent, and, proceeding to Edinburgh, the two visited backwards and forwards, as if all their ancient ani- mosity had been forgotten. Lennox, however, being advised of treachery, with- drew in the night secretly to Glasgow, where he fortified, provisioned, and garri- soned the Bishop's castle, but retired himself to Dunbarton. Here he learned CARDINAL BEATON". 175 that the Douglasses had agreed with the Haniiltons, and that, through the influ- ence of his enemies, the French king was totally estranged from him, Archibald Douglas Earl of Angus, and Robert Maxwell, in the meantime, came to Glasgow with the view of mediating between Lennox and the Regent The Regent, however, seized them both in a clandestine manner by the way, and made them close prisoners in the castle of Cadzow. While the two factious were thus harassing one another to the ruin of their common country, Henry was demand- ing by letters satisfaction for the breach of treaties and the insults that had been heaped upon him in the person of his late ambassador. No notice being taken of these letters, Henry ordered a large armament, which he had prepared to send against the coast of France, to proceed directly to Leith, and to visit Edinburgh and the adjacent country with all the miseries or war; and with so much secrecy and celerity did this armament proceed, that the first tidings heard of it in Scot- land was its appearance in Leith roads. Ten thousand men were disembarked on the 4th May, 1544, a little above Leith, who took possession of that place with- out the smallest opposition, the inhabitants being mostly abroad in the prosecu- tion of their business. The Regent and the Cardinal were both at the time in Edinburgh, and, panic-stricken at the appearance of the enemy, and still more at the hatred of the citizens, fled with the utmost precipitation towards Stirling. The English, in the meantime, having landed their baggage and artillery, march- ed in order of battle towards Edinburgh, which they sacked and set on fire ; then dispersing themselves over the neighbouring country, they burnt towns, villages and gentlemen's seats to the ground, and returning by Edinburgh to Leith, em- barked aboard their ships and set sail with a fair wind, carrying with them an immense booty, and with the loss on their part of only a few individuals. The Cardinal and his puppet the Regent, in the meantime, raised a small body offerees in the north, with which, finding the English gone, they marched against Lennox in the west, and laid siege to the castle of Glasgow, which they battered with brass cannon for a number of days. A truce was at last concluded for one day, during which the garrison were tampered with, and, on a promise of safety, surrendered. They were, however, put to death, with the exception of one or two individuals. Lennox, now totally deserted by the French, and* unable to cope with the Cardinal, had no resource but to fly into England, where, through the medium of his friends, he had been assured of a cordial reception. Before leaving the country, however, he was determined to inflict signal vengeance upon the Haniiltons. Having communicated with William Earl of Glencairn upon the subject, a day was appointed OH which they should assemble with their vassals at Glasgow, whence they might make an irruption into the territory of the Ham- iltons, which lay in the immediate neighbourhood. The Regent, informed ot this design, with the advice of the Cardinal, resolved to pre-occupy Glasgow. Glencairn, however, did not wait the appointed day, but was already in the town, and learning the approach of the Kamiltons marched out to give them battle, aided by the citizens, who do not appear to have been friendly to the Regent. The battle was stoutly contested, and for some time the Haniiltons seemed to have the worst of it. In the end, however, they gained a complete victory, the greater part of the Cuninghames being slain, and among the rest two of th* Earl's sons. Nor was it a bloodless victory to the Hamiltons, several of their chieftains being slain ; but the severest loss fell upon the citizens of Glasgow, whose houses were cruelly plundered, and even their doors and window shutters destroyed. The friends of Lennox refused to risk another engagement, but they insisted that he should keep the impregnable fortress of Dumbarton, where he might in safety await another revolution in the state of parties, which they prog- nosticated would take place in a very short time. Nothing, however, could di- 176 CARDINAL BEATON. vert him from his purpose ; and, committing the charge of the castle of Dumbar- ton to George Stirling-, he sailed for England, where he was honourably enter- tained by king Henry, who settled a pension upon him, and gave him to wife his niece, 3Iargaret Douglas, a princess in the flower of her age, and celebrated for every accomplishment becoming the female character. The Queen-dowager, aware that the faction Lennox had thus left without a leader could not be brought to submit to Arran, whose levity and imbecility of character they were now per- tectly acquainted with, nor to the Cardinal, whose cruelty they both hated and feared, and dreading they might break out into some more desperate insurreo tiou, condescended to soothe them and to take them under her particular protec- tion. Arran was delighted to be delivered from such a formidable rival upon any terms ; and in the next parliament, which met at Linlithgow, he succeeded in causing Lennox to be declared a traitor, and in having his estates and those of his friends confiscated, by which he realized considerable sums of money. The English, during these domestic broils, made a furious inroad into Scotland, burned Jedburgh and Kelso, and laid waste the whole circumjacent country. Thence proceeding to Coldingham, they fortified the church and the church lower, in which they placed a garrison on retiring to their own country. This garrison, from the love of plunder as well as to prevent supplies for a besieging army, wasted the neighbouring district to a wide extent. Turning their attention at last to general interests, the Scottish government, at the head of which was the Car- dinal, the Queen-dowager, and the nominal Regent Arran, issued a proclamation for the nobles and the more respectable of the commons to assemble armed, and with provisions for eight days, to attend the Regent Eight thousand men were speed- ily assembled, and though it was the depth of winter, they proceeded against the church and tower of Coldingham without delay. When they had been be- fore the place only one day and one night, the Regent, informed that the Eng- lish were advancing from Berwick, took horse, and with a few attendants galloped in the utmost haste to Dunbar. This inexplicable conduct threw the whole army into confusion, and, but for the bravery of one man, Archi- bald Douglas Earl of Angus, the whole of their tents, baggage, and artillery wotdd have been abandoned to the enemy. But although Angus and a lew t-t his friends, at the imminent hazard of their lives, saved the artillery and brought it in safety to Dunbar, the conduct of the army in general, and of the Regent in particular, was pusillanimous in the extreme. The spirit of the nation sunk ai.d the courage of the enemy rose in proportion. Ralph Ivers, and Brian Latoun, the English commanders, overran, without meeting with any opposition, the districts of Merse, Teviotdale, and Lauderdale, and the Forth only seemed to limit their victorious arms. Angus, who alone of all the Scottish nobility at this time gave any indication of public spirit, indignant at the nation's disgrace and deeply af- fected with his own losses, for he had extensive estates both in Merse and Teviot- dale, made a vehement representation to the Regent upon the folly of his conduct in allowing himself to be the dupe of an ambitious but cowardly priest, who, like the rest of his brethren, un warlike abroad, was seditious at home, and, exempt from danger, wished only the power of wasting the fruit of other men's labours upon Iris own voluptuousness. Always feeble and always vacillating, the Regent Mas roused by these remonstrances to a momentary exertion. An order was issued through the neighbouring counties for all the nobles to attend him, wherever he should be, without loss of time, and in company with Angus, he set out the very next day for the borders, their whole retinue not exceeding three hundred horse. Arrived at Melrose, they determined to wait for their reinforcements, having yet been joined only by a few individuals frcm the Merse. The English, who were at Jedburgh, to the number ot five thousand men, having- by their CARDINAL BEATON. 177 scouts ascertained the situation and small number of their forces, marched on the instant to surprise them, before their expected supplies should come up. The Scots, however, apprized of their intentions, withdrew to the neighbouring hills, whence, in perfect security, they watched the movements of their enemies, who, disappointed in not finding them, wandered about during the night in quest of such spoils as a lately ravaged town could supply, and with the returning dawn marched back to Jedburgh. The Scots now joined by Norman Lesly, a youth of great promise, son to the Earl of Rothes, and three hundred men from Fife, with- drew to the hills which overlook the village of Ancrum, where they were joined by the Laird of Balcleuch, an active and experienced commander, with a few of his vassals, who assured him that the remainder would follow immediately. By the advice of Balcleugh, the troops were dismounted, and the horses under the care of servants sent to an adjoining hill. The army was formed in the hollow in the order of battle. The English, as had been anticipated, seeing the horses going over the hill, supposed the Scots to be in full retreat, and eager to prevent their escape, rushed after them, and ere they were aware, fell upon the Scottish spears. Taken by surprise, the English troops, though they fought with great bravery, were thrown into disorder, and sustained a signal defeat, losing in killed and "captured up wards of thirteen hundred men. The loss on the part of the Scots was two men killed and a few wounded. In consequence of this victory, the Scots were freed from the incursions of the English for the ensuing summer ; but it was principally improved by the Regent, with the advice of the Cardinal, for drawing closer the cords of connexion with France. An ambassador was immediately despatched to that country with the tidings to report in strong terms the treachery of Lennox, and to request re- inforcements of men and money. These could not at this time indeed well be spared, as an immediate descent of the English was expected; yet, in the hopes of somewhat distracting the measures of Henry, an auxiliary force of three thou- fand loot and five hundred horse was ordered, under the command of James Mont- gomery of Largo, who was also empowered to inquire into the differences between Lennox and the Regent and Cardinal. Montgomery arrived in Scotland on the 3d day of July, 1545, and having exhibited his commission, and explained the purposes of his master, the king of France, to the Scottish council, they were induced to issue an order for an army of the better class, who might be able to support the expenses of a campaign, to assemble on an early day. This ordei was punctually complied with, and on the day appointed, fifteen thousand Scots- men assembled at Haddington, who were marched directly to the English bor- der, and encamped in the neighbourhood of Werk castle. From this camp, they carried on their incursions into the neighbouring country for about a day's iourney, carrying oft* every thing that they could lay hold of. Having wasted in the course of ten days the country that lay within their reach, and being des- titute of artillery for carrying on sieges, the army disbanded, and every man went to his own home. Montgomery repaired to court, to inquire into the dis- putes with Lennox ; the English, in the meantime, by way of reprisals, wasting the Scottish borders in every quarter. Montgomery, in the beginning of winter, returned home, leaving the Cardinal, though he blamed him as the sole author of the dissentions between Lennox and the Regent, in the full possession of all his authority. Beaton now supposed himself fully established in the civil as well as the ec- clesiastic management of the kingdom, and proceeded on a progress through the different provinces for the purpose of quieting the seditions, which, as he alleged, had arisen in various places, but in reality to repress the protestants, who, notwithstanding his having so artfully identified the cause of the catholic 178 CARDINAL BEATON. religion with that of national feeling-, had still been rapidly increasing-. Carry- ing his puppet Arran along with him, as also the Earl of Argyle, Lord Justice- General, Lord Borthwick, the Bishops of Orkney and Dunblane, &c. he came to Perth, or, as it was then more commonly called, St Johnston, where several persons were summoned before him for disputing upon the sense of the Scriptures, which, among all true catholics, was a crime to be punished by the judge. Four unhappy men, accused of having eaten a goose upon a Friday, were condemned to be hanged, which rigorous sentence was put into execution. A woman, Helen Stark, for having refused to call upon the Virgin for assistance in her labour, was drowned, although again pregnant. A number of the burgesses of the city, convicted or suspected (for in those days they were the same thing) of smaller peccadilloes, were banished from the city. He also deposed the Lord Ruthven from the provostry of the city, for being somewhat attached to the new opinions, and bestowed the office upon the Laird of Kinfauns, a relation to the Lord Gray, who was neither supposed to be averse to the new religion, nor friendly to the Cardinal ; but he hoped by this arrangement to lay a founda- tion for a quarrel between these noblemen, by which at least one of them would be cut off. This act of tyranny, by which the citizens were deprived of their privilege of choosing their own governor, was highly resented by them, as well as by the Lord Ruthven, whose family had held the place so long that they al- most considered it to be hereditary in their family. The new provost Einfauns was urged by the Cardinal and his advisers to seize upon the government of the city by force, hut the Lord Ruthven, with the assistance of the citizens, put him to the route, and slew sixty of his followers. That Ruthven was victorious must have been a little mortifying to the Cardinal ; but as the victims were enemies of the church, the defeat was the less to be lamented. From St Johnston the Cardinal proceeded to Dundee, in order to bring to punish- ment the readers of the New Testament, which about this time began to be taught to them in the original Greek, of which the Scottish priesthood knew so little that they held it forth as a new book written in a new language, invented by Mastin Luther, and of such pernicious quah'ties that, whoever had the misfortune to look into it be- came infallibly tainted with deadly lieresy. Here, however, their proceedings were interrupted by the approach of Lord Patrick Gray and the Earl of Rothes. These noblemen being both friendly to the Reformation, the Cardinal durst not admit them with their followers into a town that was notorious for attachment to that cause above all the cities of the kingdom ; he therefore sent the Regent back to Perth, whither he himself also accompanied him. Even in Perth, however, lie durst not meet them openly, and the Regent requiring them to enter sepa- rately, they complied, and were both committed to prison. Rothes was soon dismissed, but Gray, whom the Cardinal was chiefly afraid of, remained in con- finement a considerable time. The Cardinal having gone over as much of Angus as he found convenient at the time, returned to St Andrews, carrying along with him a bla^k friar named John Rogers, who had been preaching the reformed doctrine in Angus. This individual he committed to the sea-tower of St Andrews, where, it is alleged, he caused him to be privately murdered and thrown over the wall, giving out that he had attempted to escape over it, and iu the attempt fell and broke his neck. He also brought along with him the Regent Arran, of whom, though he held his son as a hostage, he was not with- out doubts, especially when he reflected upon the inconstancy of his character the native fierceness of the nobility, and the number of them that were still un- friendly to his own measures. He therefore entertained him, for twenty days together, with all manner of shows and splendid entertainments, made him many presents, and, promising him many more, set out with him to Edinburgh, CARDINAL BEATON. 179 where he convened an assembly of the clergy to devise means for putting a stop to the disorders that were so heavily complained of, and Avhich threatened the total ruin of the church. In this meeting it was proposed to allay the public clamours by taking measures for reforming the open profligacy of the priests, which was the chief source of complaint Their deliberations, however, were cut short by intelligence that George Wishart, the most eminent preacher of the reformed doctrines of his day, was residing with Cockburn of Ormiston, only about saven miles from Edinburgh. They calculated that, if they could cut off this individual, they should perform an action more serviceable to the cause of the Ciiurch, and also one of much easier accomplishment, than reforming the lives uf the priests. A troop of horse were immediately sent off to secure him ; but Cockburn, refusing to deliver him, the Cardinal himself and the Regent fol- lowed, blocking up every avenue to the house, so as to render the escape of the reformer impossible. To prevent the effusion of blood, however, the Earl of Both well was sent for, who pledged his faith to Cockburn, that he would stand by Wishart, and that no harm should befall him; upon which he was peaceably surrendered. Both well, however, wrought upon by the Cardinal, and especially by the Queen-mother, with whom, Knox observes, " he was then in the glan- ders," after some shuffling to save appearances, delivered his prisoner up to the Cardinal, who imprisoned him, first in the Castle of Edinburgh, and soon after carried him to St Andrews, where he was brought before the ecclesiastical tri- bunal, condemned for heresy, and most cruelly put to death, as the reader will find related in another part of this work, under the article WISHART. Wishart was a man mighty in the Scriptures, and few even of the martyrs have displayed more of the meekness and humility that ought to characterize the follower of Jesus Christ ; but his knowledge of the Scriptures availed him nothing, and the meek graces of his character, like oil thrown upon flame, only heightened the rage and inflamed the fury of his persecutors. Arran, pressed by his friends, and perhaps by his own conscience, wrote to the Cardinal to stay the proceed- ings till he should have time to inquire into the matter, and threatened him with the guilt of innocent blood. But the warning was in vain, and the innocent victim was only the more rapidly hurried to his end for fear of a rescue. This act of tyranny and murder was extolled by the clergy and their dependants as highly glorifying to God and honourable to the actor, who was now regarded by them as one of the prime pillars of heaven, under whose auspices the most glorious days might be expected. The people in general felt far otherwise, and, irritated rather than terrified, regarded the Cardinal as a monster of cruel- ty and lust, whom it would be a meritorious action to destroy. Beaton was not ignorant of the hatred and contempt in which he was held, nor of the devices that were forming against him ; but he supposed his power to be now so firmly established as to be beyond the reach of faction, and he was determined by the most prompt and decisive measures to be before-hand with his enemies. In the mean time, he thought it prudent to strengthen his interest, which was already great, by giving his daughter in marriage to the Master of Crawford. For this purpose he proceeded to Angus, where the marriage was celebrated with almost royal splendour, the bride receiving from her father the Cardinal, no less than four thousand marks of dowry. From these festivities he was suddenly recalled by intelligence that Henry of England was collecting a great naval force, with which he intended to annoy Scotland, and especially the coast of Fife, provide against such an exigency, the Cardinal summoned the nobility to attend nim in a tour round the coast, where he ordered fortifications to be made, and garrisons placed in the most advantageous positions. In this tour he was at- tended by the Master of Rothes, Norman Leslie, who had formerly been one of 180 CARDINAL BEATON. his friends, but had of late, from some private grudge, become cold towards him. Some altercation of course ensued, and they parted in mortal enmity ; the Cardinal determined secretly to take off; or to imprison Norman, with his friends the Lairds of Grange, elder and younger, Sir James Learmont, provost of St Andrews, and the Laird of Raith, all whom he feared, and Norman re- iolved to slay the Cardinal, be the consequences what they would. The Cardinal was in the meantime in great haste to repair and strengthen his castle, upon which a large number of men were employed almost night and day. The conspirators having lodged themselves secretly in St Andrews on the night* f May the twenty-eighth, 1 546, were, ere the dawn of the next morning, assembled to the number of ten or twelve persons in the neighbourhood of the castle, and the gates being opened to let in the workmen with their building materials, Kircaldy of Grange entered, and with him six persons, who held a parley with the porter. Norman Leslie and his company having then entered, passed to the middle of the court. Lastly came John Leslie and four men with him, at whose appear- ance the porter, suspecting some design, attempted to lift the drawbridge, but was prevented by Leslie, who leaped upon it, seized the keys, and threw the janitor himself headlong into the ditch. The place thus secured, the workmen, to the number of a hundred, ran off the walls, and were put forth at the wicket gate unhurt, Kircaldy then took charge of the privy postern, the others going through the different chambers, from which they ejected upwards of fifty persons, who were quietly permitted to escape. The Cardinal, roused from his morning slumbers by the noise, threw up his window and asked Avhat it meant. Being answered that Norman Leslie had taken his castle, he ran to the postern, but, finding it secured, returned to his chamber, drew his two-handed sword, and ordered his chamberlain to barricade the door. In the meantime, John Leslie demanded admittance, but did not gain it till a chimiieyful of burning coals was brought to burn the door, when the Cardinal or his chamberlain (it is not known which) threw it open. Beaton, who had in the mean time hidden a box of gold under some coals in a corner of the room, now sat down in a chair, cry- ing, " I am ft priest, I am a priest; you will not slay me." But he was now in the hands of men to whom his priestly character was no recommendation. John I/eslie, according to his vow, struck him twice with his dagger, and so did Peter Carmichael ; but James Melville, perceiving them to be in a passion, withdrew them, saying, " This work and judgment of God, although it be secret, ought to be gone about with gravity." Then admonishing the Cardinal of his wicked life, particularly his shedding the blood of that eminent preacher, Mr George Wishart, Melville struck him thrice through with a stag sword, and he fell, exclaiming, " Fie, fie, I am a priest, all's gone !" Before t^is time the inhabitants of St Andrews Avere apprized of what was going on, and began to throng around the castle, exclaiming, Have ye slain my Lord Cardinal ? What have ye done with my Lord Cardinal ?" As they refused to depart till they saw him, his dead body was slung out by the assassins at the same window from which he had but a short time before witnessed the burning of Mr George Wishart. Having no opportunity to bury the body, they afterwards salted it, wrapped it in lead, and consigned it to the ground floor of the sea tower, the very place where he was said to have caused Rogers the preaching friar to be murdered. In this manner fell Cardinal David Beaton, in the height of prosperity, and in the prime of life, for he had only reached the fifty-second year of his age. His death was deeply lamented by his own party, to whom it proved an irrepa- e loss, and the authors of it were regarded by them as sacrilegious assassins, >ut by numbers who, on account of difference in religion, were in dread of then- hves from h,s cruelty, and by others who were disgusted by his insufferable CARDINAL BEATON. arrogance, they were regarded as the restorers of their country's liberties, and many dir Johnson, who had been one of the warmest admirers of the Essay on Truth. 1773, he paid another visit to the metropolis, along with his wife, and was :eived into a still wider and more eminent circle than before. On this occa- sion, the university of Oxford conferred upon him an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The chief object of this tour was to secure a provision which his friends had n to expect from the government, in consideration of his services in the of religion. Many plans were proposed by his friends for obtaining this 1 Forbes' Life of Beattie. JAMES BEATTIE. 191 object. A bishop is believed to have suggested to the king, that the author of the Essay on Truth might be introduced to the English church, and ' advanced according to his merits ; to which the king, however, is said to have slily replied, that, as Scotland abounded most in infidels, if would be best for the general in- terests of religion that he should be kept there. George III., who had read and admired Beattie's book, and whose whole mind ran in favour of virtue and reli- gion, suggested himself the more direct plan of granting him a pension of two hundred pounds a year, which was accordingly carried into effect The king also honoured Dr Beattie with his particular notice at a levee, and, further, granted him the favour of an interview in his private apartments at Kew for up- wards of an hour. The agreeable conversation and unassuming manners of Dr Beattie appear to have not only made a most favourable impression upon the king and queen; for her majesty also was present at this interview but upon every member of that lofty circle of society to which he was introduced. Even after he had been thus provided for, several dignified clergymen of the church of England continued to solicit him to take orders ; and one bishop went so far as directly to tempt him with the offer of a rectorate worth five hundred a-year. He had no disinclination to the office of a clergyman, and he decid- edly preferred the government and worship of the English church to the presbyterian system of his own country. But he could not be induced to take such a reward for his efforts in behalf of religion, lest his enemies might say that he had never contemplated any loftier principle than that of bettering his own circumstances. Nearly about the same time, he further proved the total absence of a mercenary tinge in his character, by refusing to be promoted to the chair of Moral Philosophy in the university of Edinburgh. His habits of life were now, indeed, so completely associated with Aberdeen, and its society, that he seems to have contemplated any change, however tempting, with a degree of pain. About this time, some letters passed between him and Dr Priestley, on occasion of an attack made by the latter on the Essay on Truth. In his correspondence with this ingenious but petulant adversary, Dr Beattie shows a great deal of can- dour and dignity. He had at first intended to reply, but this intention he ap- pears afterwards to have dropped : " Dr Priestley," says he, " having declared that he will answer whatever I may publish in my own vindication, and being a man who loves bustle and book-making, he wishes above all things that I should give him a pretext for continuing the dispute. To silence him by force of argu- ment, is, I know, impossible." In the year 1786, Beattie took a keen interest in favour of a scheme then agitated, not for the first time, to unite the two colleges of Aberdeen. It was found impossible to carry this project into effect, though it is certainly one 01 those obvious improvements which must sooner or later be accomplished. In the same year, Dr Beattie projected a new edition of Addison's prose works, with a biographical and critical preface to the extent of half a volume, in which he meant to show the peculiar merits of the style of Addison, as well as to point oul historically the changes which the English language has undergone from time to time, and the hazard to which it is exposed of being debased and corrupted by modern innovations. He was reluctantly compelled by the state of his health to retrench the better part of this scheme. The works of Addison were published under his care, in 1790, by 3Iessrs Creech and Sibbald, booksellers, Edinburgh, but he could only give Tickell'sLife, together with some extracts from Dr Johnson's " Remarks on Addison's Prose," adding a few notes of his own, to make up any material deficiency in TickelTs narrative, and illustrating Johnson's critique by a few occasional annotations. Though Jthese additions to his original stock of ma- terials, are very slight, the admirer of Addison is much gratified by some new 192 JAMES BEATTIE. information which he was ignorant of before, and to which Dr Beattie has given degree of authenticity, by adhering, even in this instance, to his general prac- tice of putting his name to every thing he wrote. In 1787, Dr Beattie made application to the Marischal college, while the pioject of the union was still pending, desiring that his eldest son, James Hay Beattie, then in his twentieth year, should be recommended to the crown as his assistant and successor in the chair of Moral Philosophy. The letter in which this application was made, sets forth the extraordinary qualifications of his son, with a delightful mixture of delicacy and warmth. The young man was an ex- cellent Greek and Latin scholar ; wrote and talked beautifully in the latter Ian guage, as well as in English, and, to use the language of his father, the best of his genius lay entirely towards theology, classical learning, morals, poetry, and criticism. The college received the application with much respect, and, after a short delay on account of the business of the union, gave a cordial sanc- tion to the proposal. Unfortunately for the peace of Dr Beattie's latter years, his son, while in the possession of the highest intellectual qualifications, and characterised by every virtue that could be expected from his years, was destined by the inherent infirm- ity of his constitution for an early death. After his demise, which happened on the 19th of November, 1790, when he had just turned two-and-twenty, Dr Beattie published a small collection of his writings, along with an elaborate pre- face, entering largely into the character and qualifications of the deceased. In this, he was justified by the admiration which he heard everywhere expressed, of the character and intellect of his son ; but, as posterity appears to have re- duced the prodigy to its proper limits, which were nothing wonderful, it is unnecessary to bring it further into notice. The following is the more unaffected and touching account which the afflicted parent has given of his loss, in a letter to the Duchess of Gordon ; a lady with whom, for many years, he cultivated the warmest friendship, and whose society he largely enjoyed, along with his son, during repeated visits to Gordon Castle : " Knowing with what kindness and condescension your Grace takes an inter- est in every thing that concerns me and my little family, I take the liberty to inform you that my son James is dead ; that the last duties are now paid ; and that I am endeavouring to return, with the little ability that is left me, and with entire submission to the will of Providence, to the ordinary business of life. I have lost one who was always a pleasing companion ; but who, for the last five or six years, was one of the most entertaining and instructive friends that ever man was blest with : for his mind comprehended almost every science ; he was a most attentive observer of life and manners : a master of classical learning ; and he possessed an exuberance of wit and humour, a force of understanding, and a correctness and delicacy of taste, beyond any other person of his age I have ever known. " He was taken ill on the night of the 30th of November, 1789 ; and from that time his decline commenced. It was long what physicians calls a nervous atrophy ; but towards the end of June, symptoms began to appear of the lungs being affected. Goat's milk, and afterwards asses' milk, were procured for him in abundance ; and such exercise as he could bear he regularly took : these means lengthened his days, no doubt, and alleviated his sufferings, which indeed were very often severe ; but in spite of all that could be done, he grew weaker and weaker, and died the 19th of November, 1790, without complaint or pain, without even a groan or sigh ; retaining to his last moment the use of his rational faculties : indeed, from first to last, not one delirious word escaped him. He lived twenty-two years and thirteen days. Many weeks before it came, he saw JAMES BEATTIE. 193 death approaching ; and he met it with such composure and pious resignation, as may no doubt be equalled, but cannot be surpassed. My chief comfort arises from reflecting upon the par- ticulai-s of his life ; which was one uninterrupted exercise of piety, benevolence, filial affection, and indeed every virtue which it was in his power to practise' I shall not, with respect to him, adopt a mode of speech which has become too common, and call him my poor son, for I must believe that he is infinitely happy, and will be so for ever." Dr Beattie bore the loss of his son with an appearance of fortitude and re- signation. Yet, although his grief was not loud, it was deep. He said, in a subsequent letter, alluding to a monument which he had erected for his son : I often dream of the grave that is under it : I saw, with some satisfaction, on a late occasion, that it is very deep, and capable of holding my coffin laid on that which is already in at ;" words that speak more eloquently of the griet which this event had fixed in the heart of the writer, than a volume could have done. The following is a copy of the epitaph which he composed for his amia- ble and accomplished child : JACOBO HAY BEATTIE. JACOBI, F. Philos. in Acad. Marischal Professor!. Adolescenti. Ea. Modestia. Ea. suavitati. morum. Ea. benevolentia. erga. omnes. Erga. Deum. pietate. Ut Humanum. nihil. supra. In. bonis. literis. In. theologia. In. omni. Philosophia, Exercitissimo. Poetse. insuper. Rebus, in. levioribus. faceto. In. grandioribus. sublimi. Qui. PJacidam. Animam. efflavit xix. Novemb. MDCCXC. Annos. habens. xxii. diesque. xiii. PATER MOERENS. H. M. P. Another exemplification of the rooted sorrow which this event planted in the mind of Beattie, occurs in a letter written during a visit in England, in the sub- sequent summer. Speaking of the commemoration music, which was performed in Westminster Abbey, " by the greatest band of musicians that ever were brought together in this country," he tells that the state of his health could not permit him to be present Then recollecting his son's accomplishment as a player on the organ, he adds, " Perhaps this was no loss to me. Even the organ of Dur- ham cathedral was too much for my feelings ; for it brought too powerfully to my remembrance another organ, much smaller indeed, but more interesting, which I can never hear any more." In 1790, Dr Beattie published the first volume of his " Elements of Moral Science," the second volume of which did not make its appearance till 1793. He had, in 1770, published a series of Essays on poetry and music, on laughable and ludicrous composition, and on the utility of classical learning. In 1783, had appeared " Dissertations, Moral and Critical," and, in 1786, a small tract entitled, " The Evidences of the Christian Religion, briefly and plainly stated." All of these minor productions originally formed part of the course of prelections which he read from his chair in the university ; his aim in their publication be- l- *U JAMES BBATT1E. ing " to inure young minds to habits of attentive observation; to guard them against the influence of bad principles ; and to set before them such views of na- ture, and such plain and practical truths, as might at once improve the heart and the understanding, and amuse and elevate the fancy." His " Elements of Moral Science," was a summary of the whole of that course of lectures, a little enlarged in the doctrinal parts, with the addition of a few illustrative examples. In a certain degree, this work may be considered as a text-book; it is one, however, so copious in its extent, so luminous in its arrangement and language, and so excellent in the sentiments it everywhere inculcates, that if the profound meta- physician and logician do not find in it that depth of science which they may ex- pect to meet with in other works of greater erudition, the candid enquirer after truth may rest satisfied, that, if he has studied these " Elements " with due atten- tion, he will have laid a solid foundation, on which to build all the knowledge of the subject necessary for the common purposes of life. Of such of the lectures as had already appeared in an extended shape, under the name of " Essays," particularly those on the theory of language, and on memory and imagination, Dr Beattie has made this abridgment as brief as was consistent with any degree of perspicuity ; while he bestowed no less than seventy pages on his favourite topic, the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and the subject of slavery connected with it While delighting the world with the quick succession and variety of his produc- tions, Dr Eeattie was himself nearly all the while a prey to the severest private suf- ferings. Mrs Beattie had unfortunately inherited from her mother a tendency to madness. Though this did not for a considerable time break out into open insanity, yet in a few years after their marriage, it showed itself in caprices and follies, which embittered every hour of her husband's life. Dr Beattie tried for a long time to conceal her disorder from the world, and, if possible, as he has been heard to say, from himself; but at last, from whim, caprice, and melan- choly, it broke out into downright phrenzy, which rendered her seclusion from society absolutely necessary. During every stage of her illness, he watched and cherished her with the utmost tenderness and care ; using every means at first that medicine could furnish for her recovery, and afterwards, when her condition was found to be perfectly hopelesss, procuring for her, in an asylum at Mussel- burgh, every accommodation and comfort that could tend to alleviate her suffer- ings. " When I reflect," says Sir William Forbes, " on the many sleepless nights, and anxious days, which he experienced from Mrs Beattie's malady, and think of the unwearied and unremitting attention he paid to her, during so great a number of years in that sad situation, his character is exalted in my mind to a degree which may be equalled, but I am sure never can be excelled, and makes the fame of the poet and the philosopher fade from my remembrance." The pressure of this calamity slow but certain the death of his eldest son, and the continued decline of his health, made it necessary, in the session ol' 1793-4, that he should be assisted in the duties of his class. From that period till 1797, when he finally relinquished his professorial duties, he was aided b) Mr George Glennie, his relation and pupil. He experienced an additional ca- lamity in 1796, by the sudden death of his only remaining son, Montague, a youth of eighteen, less learned than his brother, but of still more amiable man ners, and whom he had designed for the English church. This latter event un- hinged the mind of Beattie, who, it may be remarked, had always been greatly dependent on the society, and even on the assistance, of his children. 'Ihe care of their education, in which he was supposed to be only over indulgent, had been his <-hief employment for many years. This last event, by rendering him childless, dissolved nearly the last remaining tie which bound him to the world ; and left JAMES BEATTIE. 195 him a miserable wreck upon the shores of life. Many days had not elapsed after the death of Montague Beattie, ere he began to display symptoms of a de- cayed intellect, in an almost total loss of memory respecting his son. He would search through the whole house for him, and then say to his niece and house- keeper, Mrs Glennie, " You may think it strange, but I must ask you, if I have a son, and where he is." This lady would feel herself under'the painful necessity of bringing to his recollection the death-bed sufferings of his son, which always restored him to reason. A>.d he would then, with many tears, express his thank- fulness that he had no child, saying, with allusion to the malady they might have derived from their mother, " How could I have borne to see their elegant minds mangled with madness ?'' When he looked for the last time on the dead body of his son, and thought of the separation about to take place between himself and the last being that connected him with this sublunary scene, he said, " Now, I have done with the world !" After this, he never bent his mind again to study, never touched the violincello on which he used to be an excellent and a frequent player, nor answered the letters of his friends, except, perhaps, a very few. He commanded his mind, however, to compose the following epitaph on his son ; it was the last effort of the Minstrel, and has all his usual happiness in this peculiar branch of composition : MONTAGU. BEATTIE. Jacobi. Hay. Beattie. Frater. Ejusque. virtutuin. et. studiorum. JEmulus. Sepulchrique. censors Variarum. Peritus. Artium. Pingendi. imprimis. Natus. Octavo. Julii. MDCCLXXVIII. Multum. Defletus. obiit. Decimo. quarto. Martii. MDCCXCV. The phrase " sepulchrique consors " was literally true. That space in the roomy grave of his eldest son, which he had calculated on as sufficient for him- self, was devoted to receive this second and final hope of his old age. In March 1797, Dr Beattie became completely crippled with rheumatism, and in the beginning of 1799, he experienced a stroke of palsy, which for eight days so affected his speech that he could not make himself understood, and even for- got several of the most material words of every sentence. At different periods after this, he had several returns of the same afflicting malady ; the last, in Octo- ber 1802, deprived him altogether of the power of motion. He lingered for ten months in this humiliating situation, but was at length relieved from all his suf- ferings by the more kindly stroke of death, August 1 8, 1 803. He expired without the least appearance of suffering. His remains were deposited close to those of liis two sons in the ancient cemetery of St Nicolas, and were marked soon after by a monument, for which Dr James Gregory of Edinburgh, supplied an elegant inscription. The eminent rank which Dr Beattie holds as a Christian moral philosopher is a sufficient testimony of the public approbation of his larger literary efforts. It may, however, be safely predicted, that his reputation will, after all, centre in his " Minstrel," which is certainly his most finished work, and, every thing con- sidered, the most pleasing specimen of his intellect. If we consider how much original talent, and how much cultivated taste must have been necessary to the composition of this beautiful poem, we will wonder that such should have been found in a professor of a Scottish provincial university, at a time when scarcely any vestige of the same qualifications was to be found out of London. "Beat- 196 ANDREW BELL, D.D. tie," says Cowper a kindred mind, well qualified to judge of his merits, " is the most agreeable and amiable writer I have ever met with ; the only author I have seen whose critical and philosophical researches are diversified and embellished by a poetical imagination, that makes even the driest subject, and the leanest, a feast for an epicure in books ; one so much at his ease, too, that his own charac- ter appears in every page, and, which is very rare, not only the writer but the man ; and the man so gentle, so well tempered, so happy in his religion, and so humane in his philosophy, that it is necessary to love him, if one has any sense of what is lovely. The mind of Beattie is so exactly identified with his works, and is so undis- guisedly depicted in them, that when his works are described, so also is his char- acter. His whole life was spent in one continued series of virtuous duties. His piety was pure and fervent ; his affection for his friends enthusiastic ; his bene- volence unwearying, and the whole course of his life irreproachable. The only fault which his biographer, Sir William Forbes, could find in the whole com- position of his character, was one of a contingent and temporary nature : he be- came, towards the end of his life, a little irritable by continued application to metaphysical controversy. Although his connections in early life had been of the humblest sort, yet he showed no awkwardness of behaviour in the most polished circles to which his eminent literary reputation afterwards introduced him. On the other hand, though, in the course of his frequent visits to England, lie was caressed by the very highest personages in the realm, he never was in the least degree spoilt, but returned to his country with as humble and unassuming manners as he had carried away from it. To a very correct and refined taste in poetry, he added the rare accomplishment of an acquaintance to a considerable extent with both the sister arts of painting and music : his practice in drawing never went, in- deed, beyond an occasional grotesque sketch of some friend, for the amusement of a social hour. In music he was more deeply skilled, being not only able to take part in private concerts on the violoncello, but capable of appreciating the music of the very highest masters for every other instrument In his person, he was of the middle height, though not elegantly, yet not awkwardly formed, but with something of a slouch in his gait. His eyes were black and piercing, with an expression of sensibility somewhat bordering on melancholy, except when en- gaged in cheerful conversation, and social intercourse with his friends, when they were exceedingly animated. Such was " the Minstrel" BELL, ANDREW, D.D., author of the "Madras System of Education," was born at St Andrews, in 1753, and educated at the university of that place. The circum- stances of his early life, and even the date of his entering into holy orders, are not known ; but it is stated that he was remarkable in youth for the exemplary manner in which he fulfilled every public and private duty. After having spent some time in America, we find him, in 1786, officiating as one of the ministers of St Mary's, at Madras, and one of the chaplains of Fort St George. In that year, the Directors of the East India Company sent out orders to Madras, that a seminary should be established there, for the education and maintenance of the orphans and distressed male children of the European military. The proposed institution was at first limited to the support of a hundred orphans : half the expense was defrayed by the Company, and half by voluntary subscriptions ; and the Madras Government appropriated Egmore Redoubt for the use of the establishment. The superintendence of this ayslum was undertaken by Dr Bell, who, having no object in view but the gratification of his benevolence, refused the salary of 1200 pagodas (480) which was attached to it. " Here," he reasoned with himself, " is a field lor a clergyman, to animate his exertion, and encourage his diligence. Here his ANDREW BELL, D.D. 107 success is certain, and will be in proportion to the ability he shall discover, the labour he shall bestow, and the means he shall employ. It is by instilling principles of religion and morality into the minds of the young, that he can best accomplish the ends of his ministry : it is by forming them to habits of diligence, industry, veracity, and honesty, and by instructing them in useful knowledge, that he can best promote their individual inteiest, and serve the state to which they belong, two purposes which cannot, in sound policy, or even in reality, exist apart." With these feelings, and with this sense of duty, Dr Bell began his task. He had to work upon the most unpromising materials, but the difficulties he had to encounter led to that improvement in education with which his name is connected. Failing to retain the services of properly qualified ushers, he resorted to the expedient of conducting his school through the medium of the scholars themselves. It is in the mode of conducting a school by means of mutual instruction, that the discovery of Dr Bell consists ; and its value, as an abbreviation of the mechanical part of teaching, and where large numbers were to be taught economically, could not be easily over- estimated at the time, although later educationalists have improved upon the plan, and the Madras system is now less in use than formerly. The first new practice which Dr Bell introduced into his school, was that of teaching the letters, by making the pupils trace them in sand, as he had seen children do in a Malabar school. The next improvement, was the practice of sjllabic reading. The child, after be had learned to read and spell monosyllables, was not allowed to pronounce two syllables till he acquired by long practice a perfect precision. From the commencement of his experiment, he made the scholars, as far as possible, do everything for themselves : they ruled their own paper, made their own pens, aba, to Ispahan, where they arrived on the 14th of March, 2U4: JOHN BELL. 1717. They left that city on the 1st of September, and returned to St Peters- burgh on the 30th of December, 1718, after having travelled across the country from SaratofE On his arrival in the capital, Mr Bell found that his friend and patron, Dr Areskine had died about six weeks before, but he had now secured the friendship of the ambassador, and upon hearing that an embassy to China was preparing he easily obtained an appointment in it through his influence. The account of his journey to Cazan, and through Siberia to China, is by far the most complete and interesting part of his travels. His description of the man- ners, customs, and superstitions of the inhabitants, and of the Delay-lama and Chinese wall, deserve particularly to be noticed. They arrived at Pekin " after a tedious journey of exactly sixteen months." Mr Bell has left a very full account of occurrences during his residence in the capital of China. The em- bassy left that city on the 2nd of March, 1721, and arrived at Moscow on the 5th of January, 1722. The war between Russia and Sweden was now concluded, and the Czar had de termined to undertake an expedition into Persia, at the request of the Sophy, to assist that prince against the Affghans, his subjects, who had seized upon Kand- ahar, and possessed themselves of several provinces on the frontiers towards India. Mr Bell's former journey to Persia gave him peculiar advantages, and he was accordingly engaged to accompany the army to Derbent, from which he returned in December, 1722. Soon afterwards he revisited his native country, and re- turned to St Petersburgh in 1734. In 1737, he was sent to Constantinople by the Russian Chancellor, and Mr Rondeau the British minister at the Russian court. 1 He seems now to have abandoned the public service, and to have settled at Constantinople as a merchant. About 1746, he married Mary Peters, a Rus- sian lady, and determined to return to Scotland. He spent the latter part of his life on his estate, and in the enjoyment of the society of his friends. At length, after a long life spent in active beneficence, and exertions for the good of mankind, he died at Antermony on the 1st of July, 1780, at the advanced age of 89. The only work written by Mr Bell is his " Travels from St Petersburg!! in Russia, to various parts of Asia," to which reference has already been made. It was printed in 2 volumes quarto by Robert and Andrew Foulis, in 1763, and published by subscription. " The history of this book," says the Quarterly Review, " is somewhat curious, and not generally known. For many years aftei Mr Bell returned from his travels, he used to amuse his friends with accounts of what he had seen, refreshing his recollection from a simple diary of occurrences and observations. The Earl Granville, then president of the council, on hearing some of his adventures, prevailed on him to throw his notes together into the form of a narrative, which, when done, pleased him so much that he sent the manuscript to Dr Robertson, with a particular request that he wotdd revise and put it into a fit state for the press. The literary avocations of the Scottish historian at that time not allowing him to undertake the task, he recommended Mr Barron, a professor in the University of Aberdeen, and on this gentleman consulting Dr Robertson as to the style and the book of travels which he would recommend him to adopt for his guide, the historian replied, ' Take Gulliver's Travels for your model, and you cannot go wrong.' He did so, and ' Bell's Travels' have all the simplicity of Gulliver, with the advantage which truth always carries over fiction." 2 BELL, JOHN, an eminent surgeon in Edinburgh, and of distinguished literary qualifications, was born in 1762. He was the second son of the Rev. William 1 M'Ure's History of Glasgow, new edition, p. 115. 2 Quarterly Review on M'Leod's Voyage in the Alceste, 1817, pp. 464-5. JOHN BELL. 20J Bell, a clergyman of the Scottish Episcopal Church, established at Edinburgh. His mother was the daughter of Mr Morrice, also a member of the Scottish Epis- copal Church. Mr John Bell, after receiving a liberal education, became the pupil of Mr Alexander Wood, surgeon, who was long celebrated in Edin- burgh as a medical practitioner. From the first, Mr Bell devoted himself to his professional studies with that enthusiastic ardour so characteristic of genius, and almost always the precursor of distinction. After completing his professional education he travelled for a short time in Russia, and the north of Europe ; and on his return commenced his professional duties by delivering lectures on Surgery and Midwifery. These lectures, which he delivered between the years 1786 and 1796, were very highly esteemed, and speedily brought him into practice as a consulting and operating surgeon. The increase of his private practice, indeed, rendered it necessary for him, in 1796, to discontinue his lectures, and from that time forward he devoted himself to his patients, and to the preparation of the several publications of which he was the author. For upwards of twenty years Mr Bell may be said to have stood at the head of his profession in Edinburgh as an operator. Patients came to him from all quarters, both of Scotland and England, and even from the continent ; and during that interval he performed some of the most delicate and difficult opera- tions in surgery. Nor was his celebrity confined to Edinburgh. He was gene- rally known both in this country and throughout the world, as one of the most distinguished men in his profession ; and his works show that his reputation was well founded. Early in 1816, he was thrown by a spirited horse; and appears never to have entirely recovered from the effects of the accident. In the autumn of that year he made an excursion, partly on account of his health, to London ; thence he proceeded to Paris, and afterwards pursued his journey southwards, visiting the most distinguished cities of Italy. During his residence on the Continent, he was treated in the most flattering manner by the members of his own profession ; and his countrymen, who, after the peace of 1815, had gone to the Continent in great numbers, gladly took his professional assistance. In Paris, Naples, and Rome in particular, his numerous patients occupied him perhaps too exclusively ; for his health continued to decline, and he died at Rome, April 15, 1820, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. Mr Bell very early in life became impressed with a high notion of the ad- vantage of combining general accomplishments with professional skill ; he there- fore spared no pains to qualify himself in every w T ay to assume a favourable po- sition in society. He was a good classical scholar, and so general a reader that there were few works of any note in literature, either ancient or modern, with which he was not familiar. This was remarkably shown in his library, in which there was hardly a volume on any subject which did not bear traces of having been carefully perused and noted by him. His practice was to make annota- tions on the margin as he read ; and considering the engrossing nature of his professional labours, and the several works in which he was himself engaged, nothing is more extraordinary than the evidence which is still in existence cf the extent and variety of his miscellaneous reading. The information which he thus acquired was not lost upon him ; he was po- lished and easy in his manners his perception of the ludicrous was keen and the tact with which he availed himself of his extensive reading and general knowledge of all the interesting topics of the day, will be long remembered by those who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. His conversational powers, indeed, were of the very highest order ; and as he had great urbanity and kind- ness of manner, and was happily free from that affectation by which good talkers JOHN BELL. are sometimes distinguished, there were few of his cotemporaries whose society was more generally courted by the upper classes in Edinburgh ; and none who were better tilted to adorn and enliven the circle in which he moved. Mr Bell's notions of the dignity of his profession were very high ; and no man perhaps ever discharged his professional duties with more disinterested humanity, and honourable independence. His generosity to those whose cir- cumstances required pecuniary aid was well known, and his contempt for any thing approaching to what he thought mean or narrow minded, was boundless, and frequently expressed in no very measured terms. The warmth of his tem- per, however, involved him in several misunderstandings with his professional brethren ; the most remarkable of which was that which brought him and the late Dr Gregory into collision. The question on which these two distinguished men took opposite sides, related to the right of the junior members of the Col- lege of Surgeons of Edinburgh, to perform operations in the Royal Infirmary. This dispute divided the medical men of Edinburgh towards the close of the last century ; and Dr Gregory and Mr Bell wrote several volumes about it. But, although great wit and much happy sarcasm were displayed on both sides, it is impossible to look back to this dissension without feeling regret that two of the most eminent medical men of their day should have wasted their ingenuity and high talents in acrimonious and unprofitable controversy, on a topic of epheme- ral interest and comparatively minor importance. Mr Bell's principal publica- tion in this controversy was entitled, " Letters on Professional Character and Manners ; on the education of a Surgeon, and the duties and qualifications of a Physician; addressed to James Gregory, M.D. Edinburgh, 1810. It is a large octavo volume, and is characterised by extraordinary acrimony. In the fine arts, Mr Bell's taste was very correct. As a painter and draughts- man his talents were far above mediocrity ; and the anatomical drawings by which his works are illustrated have been much admired. He was also a profi- cient in music, with more taste, however, than execution ; and, as Mrs Bell was also a highly accomplished musician, his musical parties, although conducted on a scale of expense which his circumstances hardly warranted, assembled at his house the elite of Edinburgh society. He had no family, and his whole house was laid out for this species of display a foible which those who were inclined to laugh at his expense, did not overlook ; and which was to a certain extent censurable, since his income, although very large, was never equal to his ex- penditure. Mr Bell's personal appearance was good. Although considerably under the middle size, he was exceedingly well proportioned, very active, and studiously elegant in his movements. His head was well formed, his features regular, his eyes keen and penetrating, and his whole expression intellectual and intelligent in no ordinary degree. He was also remarkable for the good taste which he exhibited in his dress ; and was altogether a person whom even a stranger could not have passed without recognizing as no ordinary man. The limits of this work do not admit of an analysis of Mr Bell's writings. The best is his treatise on " Gun-shot wounds," to enable him to prepare which, he passed some weeks amongst the wounded men of Lord Duncan's fleet, after the battle of Camperdown. The following is a complete list of his professional works : 1. The Anatomy of the Human Body, voL i. 8vo. 1793, containing the Bones, Muscles, and Joints; vol. ii. 1797, containing the Heart and Arteries; vol. iii. 1802, con- taining the Anatomy of the Brain, Description of the course of the nerves, and the Anatomy of the Eye and Ear ; with plates by Charles Bell, third edition, 3 vols, 8vo. 1811. 2. Engravings of the Bones, Muscles, and Joints, illustrating WILLIAM BELLENDEN. 207 the first volume of the Anatomy of the Human Body, drawn and engraved by himself, royal 4to. 1794, third edition. 3. Engravings of the Arteries, illus- trating the second volume of the Anatomy of the Human Body, royal 4to. 1801, third edition, 8vo. 1810. 4. Discourses on the nature and cure of wounds 8vo. 1795; third edition, 1812. 5. Answer for the Junior Members of the' Royal College of Surgeons to the Memorial of Dr James Gregory, to the Mana- gers of the Royal Infirmary, 8vo. 1800. 6. The Principles of Surgery, 3 vols. 4to. 1801-1808. 7. Letters on Professional Character, &c. His Observa- tions on Italy is a posthumous work, which was edited by his respected friend, the late Bishop Sandford of Edinburgh. Mr Bell married Miss Congleton, daughter of Dr Congleton of Edinburgh. His eldest brother was the late Robert Bell, Advocate, Professor of Conveyancing to the Society of Writers to the Signet ; author of the " Scotch Law Dictionary," and of several other works on the law of Scotland ; who died in 1816. John Bell's immediately younger brothers were, the late George Joseph Bell, Advocate, Professor of the Law of Scotland in the University of Edinburgh, and author of "Commentaries on the Law of Scotland," a work of high authority; and the late Sir Charles Bell, F.R.S. of London, the distinguished anatomist and physiologist. It is rare to find so many members of the same family so favourably known to the public. BELLENDEN, WILLIAM, more commonly known by his Latin name of Guliel- mus Bellendenus, is one of those learned and ingenious Scotsmen of a former age, who are esteemed in the general literary world as an honour to their coun- try, but with whom that country itself is scarcely at all acquainted. As there were many great but unrecorded heroes before Agamemnon, so may it be said that there have flourished, out of Scotland, many illustrious Scotsmen, whose names have not been celebrated in that country. It is time, however, that this should cease to be the case, at least in reference to William Bellenden, whose intellect appears to have been one of most extraordinary character, and whose intellectual efforts, if in a shape to command more extensive appreciation, would certainly be considered a great addition to those productions which reflect hon- our upon his native country. William Bellenden was unquestionably a member of that family whose name has been variously spelled Ballenden, Ballantyn, and latterly Ballantyne, and which has produced several men eminent in Scottish literature. He lived in the reign of James VI., to whom he was Magister Supplicum Libelloncm, 01 reader of private petitions, an office probably conferred upon him in considera- tion of his eminent learning. King James, whose many regal faults were re- deemed in no small measure by his sincere love of literature, and his extensive patronage of literary men, provided Bellenden with the means of leading a life of studious retirement at the French capital, where he is said to have afterwards become Professor of Humanity, and an advocate in the parliament of Paris. As he is said to have enjoyed his office of professor in 1602, it would of course appear that James had furnished the necessary allowances for the retirement of his learned protegee out of the slender revenues which he enjoyed in his native kingdom ; a circumstance which enhances the praise due to him for his munifi- cence in a very high degree. Bellenden's first work, entitled, " Ciceronis Princeps," and published, appa- rently without his name, in 1608, is a treatise on the duties of a prince, formed out of passages of the works of Cicero referring to that subject. In this work, "he shows that, whoever desires to exercise authority over others, should first of all learn the government of himself; should remember and be obedient to every thing which the laws command ; should on all occasions be ready to hear the 208 WILLIAM BELLENDEN. sentiments of the wise ; disdaining whatever bears affinity to corruption, and abhorring the delusions of flattery : he should be tenacious in preserving his dignity, and cautious how he attempts to extend it; he should be remarkable for the purity of his morals, and the moderation of his conduct, and never direct his hand, his eye, or his imagination, to that which is the property of another." 1 To the " Ciceronis Princeps," in which Bellenden has only the merit of an in- genious collector, was prefixed an original essay, styled, "Tractatus de Processu et Scriptoribus Rei Politico," in which there is a rich vein of masculine sense and fervent piety, while the origin of our errors in religion, and of our defects in policy and learning, is traced out with considerable accuracy and erudition. In this treatise, the author, while he condemns the monstrous tenets of ancient idolatry, and the gross corruptions of philosophy, bestows many just encomiums on the wisdom and patriotism of some ancient legislators. He informs us that among the Greek theorists, there is no systematic work on the science of poli- tics, at once comprehensive in its principles, and applicable to real life; but acknowledges that much useful information may be gathered from the writings of Xenophon, and the fragments of Solon, Charondas, and Zaleucus. On the authority of Cicero, he represents Demetrius Phalereus as the first person who united the practice of politics with a correct and profound knowledge of his art. He allows, however, great merit to Plato, to Aristotle, to Theophrastus, and oilier imitators of Hippodamus, who, it seems, was the first writer on the subject of government, without being personally concerned in the administration of it. He then speaks with becoming and warm admiration of Cicero, and enumerates the political Avorks of that writer which have come down to us those which were written by him, but Jire now lost and those which he intended to draw up at the request of Atticus. Bellenden next published a treatise, formed like the foregoing from detached passages in Cicero, regarding the duties of the consul, senator, and senate among ihe Romans. It was entitled, " Ciceronis Consul, Senator, Populusque Romanus : illustratus publici observatione juris, gravissimi usus disciplina, administrandi temperata ratione : notatis inclinationibus temporum in Rep. et actis rerum in Senatu : qute a Ciceroniana nondum edita profluxere memoria, annorum DCCX. congesta in libros xvi. De statu rerum Romanorum unde jam manavit Ciceronis Princeps, dignus habitus summorum lectione principum." Bellenden has here shown, not only the duties of a senator, or statesman, but upon what basis the rights of a free but jealous people are erected, and the hallowed care those iiK stitutions demand, which have descended to us from our ancestors. This work was published at Paris, in 1612, and like the former, was dedicated to Henry, Prince of Wales. On the title page, the author is termed " Magister Supplicum Libellorum augusti Regis Magnae Britanniae ;" from which it would appear that either there is a mistake in describing him as Master of Requests to the King of Scotland, or he must have been subsequently preferred to the same office for Great Britain. The office, since he resided at Paris, must have been a sinecure. and was probably given to him as a means of sustaining him in literary leisure. The next work of Bellenden was entitled, " De Statu Prisci Orbis, in lleli- gione, Re Politica, et Literis, liber unus." It was printed, but may scarcely be described as published, in 1615. This is the most original of Bellenden's works. The expressions and sentiments are all his own, excepting the quotations which he takes occasion to introduce from his favourite Cicero. In this work he lias * : brought to light, from the most remote antiquity, many facts which had been buried in oblivion. Whatever relates to the discipline of the Persians and Egyptians, which was obscure in itself, and very variously dispersed, he has care- 1 Parr's Preface to Bcllendeuus. WILLIAM BELLENDEN. 20 i) fully collected, placed in one uniform point of view, and polished with diligent acuteness. In a manner the most plain and satisfactory, he has described" the first origin of states, their progressive political advances, and how they differed from each other. Those fabulous inventions with which Greece has encumbered history, he explains and refutes. Philosophy owes him much. He has confuted .ill those systems which were wild and extravagant, and removed the difficulties from such as were in their operation subservient to religious piety. But he has in particular confirmed and dignified with every assistance of solid argument, whatever tended to serve the great truths of revelation. Much, however, as he has been involved in the gloom of ancient times, he in no one instance assumes the character of a cold unfeeling antiquary; he never employs his talents upon those intricate and useless questions in endeavouring to explain which many luckless and idle ideologists- torment themselves and lose their labour. The style of Bellendenus, in this performance, is perspicuous, and elegant without affecta- tion. The different parts of the work are so well and so judiciously disposed, that we meet with nothing harsh and dissonant, no awkward interval or inter- rtiption, nothing placed where it ought not to remain." 2 All these three works namely, the " Princeps," the " Consul," and the " De Statu Prisci Orb is," were republished in 1616, in a united form, under the ge- neral title, " DE STATU, LIBRI TRES." Prince Henry being now dead, the whole work was dedicated anew to his surviving brother Charles ; a circumstance which afforded the author an opportunity of paying an ingenious compliment to the latter prince : Uno avulso non deficit alter, Aureus, et simili frondescit virga metallo. Of the justness of this eulogy the politician may have some doubt, but the nmn of feeling will be captivated by its elegance and pathos. The last work which Bellenden himself published is of very small extent, con- sisting merely of two short poems : " Caroli Primi et Henries Marias, Regis et Keginae Magnae Britannia?," &c. " Epithalamium ; et in ipsas augustissimas nuptias, Panegyricum Carmen et Flogia." Paris, 1675, 4to. It would appear that Bellenden did not soon forget the kind patronage which he had experienced irom King James, but transferred his gratitude, with his loyalty, to the descen- dants of that prince. This is the only known specimen of Bellenden's efforts in poetry. The "De Statu, Libri Tres," which perhaps were never very extensively dif- fused, had latterly become so extremely scarce, as only to be known by name to the most of scholars. From this obscurity, the work was rescued in 1787, by Dr Samuel Pan-, the most eminent British Latinist of modern times. Dr Parr republished it in an elegant form, with a preface, which, though embracing a singular jumble of subjects, and not free from the charge of pedantry, is justly looked upon as one of the most admirable specimens of modern Latin which we possess. Imitating the example of Bellendenus, who prefixed a dedication to each of his three books, the learned editor inscribed them anew to three great men of modern times, Edward Burke, Lord North, and Charles James Fox, who were then the leaders of his own party in British politics. In the preface, he introduced a high allegorical eulogy upon these statesmen, which was admired ns a singularly nervous piece of composition, though there were, of course, diffe- rent opinions as to the justness of the panegyric. He also exposed the plagiary which Middleton, in composing his "Life of Cicero," had committed upon the splendid stores of Bellenden. V> hile Bellenden was employed in writing his tripartite work, " De Statu," he * Parr's Preface 210 WILLIAM BELLENDEN. had Cicero constantly before him. " His wannest attachment, and incrensin? admiration," to quote the words of Dr Parr, " were necessarily attracted to the character whose writings were the object of his unremitting attention ; whose expressions were as familiar to him as possible ; and whose various and profound learning occupied all the faculties of his soul." He now commenced a still more extensive and laborious cento of the writings of the Roman orator, which In- concluded in sixteen books, and which, with the addition of similar centoes of the writings of Seneca and Pliny the Elder, was to bear the name, " De Tribtis Luminibus Romanorum." The Ciceronian cento, the only one he lived to com- plete, is justly considered a most extraordinary performance. By an exertion of fictitious machinery, akin to the modern historical romance, Cicero is intro- duced as if he had spoken or written the whole from beginning to end. The first seven books give a very concise abstract of the Roman history, from the foundation of the city, to the 647th year, in which he was born. Then he be- comes more particular in the account of his own times, and enlarges very fully on all that happened after his first appearance in public business. He gives an account of the most remarkable of his orations and epistles, and the occasions on which they were written, as also of such of his philosophical works as have come down to us, and of some other pieces that are now lost, ending with a letter he is supposed to have written to Octavianus, afterwards named Augustus, which let- ter, however, is supposed to be spurious. There cannot be a more complete history of the life of Cicero, or of the tumultuous times in which he lived, than this work, all of which, by an exquisite ingenuity, is so faithfully compiled iivnu the known works of the orator, that probably there is not in the whole book a single expression, perhaps not a single word, which is not to be found in that great storehouse of philosophical eloquence. Nor is there any incoherence or awkwardness in this re-arrangement of Cicero's language ; but, on the contrary, the matter flows as gracefully as in the original. " Whatever we find," says Parr, in the different writings of Cicero, elegantly expressed, or acutely con- ceived, Bellendenus has not only collected in one view, but elucidated in the clearest manner. He, therefore, who peruses this performance with the attention which it merits, will possess all the treasures of antiquity, all the energy of the mightiest examples. He will obtain an adequate knowledge of the Roman law, and system of jurisprudence, and may draw, as from an inexhaustible source, an abundance of expressions, the most exquisite in their kind." In the opinion of another critic, 1 it is inconceivable that Bellenden could have composed this sin- gular work, without having the whole of the writings of Cicero, and all the col- lateral authorities, in his mind at once, as it must have been quite impossible to perform such a task by turning over the leaves of the books, in order to find the different expressions suited to the various occasions where they were required. After the death of Bellenden, the date of which is only known to have been posterior to 1625, the manuscript of his great work fell into the hands of one Toussaint du Bray, who printed it at Paris in 1631, or 1634, and dedicated it to King Charles I. of Great Britain. It is alleged that the principal part of the impression, about a thousand copies, was shipped for sale in Britain, and was lost on the passage, so that only a few copies survived. The work therefore fell at once into obscurity, and in a few years was scarcely known to exist One copy having found its way to the Cambridge University Library, fell into the hands of Conyers Middleton, the keeper of that institution, who seems to have adopted the idea of making it the ground-work for a Life of Cicero under his own name. Hence has arisen one of the most monstrous instances of literary 1 The late Earl of Buchan, who had the extraordinary fortune to possess a copy of this rare book. WILLIAM BELLENDEN. 211 plugium which modern times have witnessed. The work of Middleton at once attained to great reputation, and chiefly through that skilful arrangement of the \vritings of the orator himself, which Bellenden had provided to his hands. The theft was first denounced by Warton, and subsequently made clear by Dr Parr, in his preface to the " De Statu.'' As the latter gentleman was prepossessed in favour of both the literary and political character of Middleton, the terms in which he speaks of the theft are entitled to the more weight. He commences his exposure in the following strain of tender apology, which we quote in the original, on account of its extraordinary beauty ; for we know not that even the writings of Ttilly exhibit periods more harmonious, or that the human ear has hitherto been gratified with a more enchanting sweetness of language : " Litteraj fuerunt Middletono, non vulgares hse et quotidian*, sed uberrimje et maxime exquisitae. Fuit judicium subtile limatumque. Teretes et religiosaa fuer- unt aures. Stylus est ejus ita purus ac suavis, ita salebris sine ullis profluens quiddam et canorum habet, nuuieros ut videatur compleeti, quales in alio quopiam, praeter Addisonum, frustra quaesiveris. Animum fuisse ejusdem parum candidum ac sincerum, id vero, fateor invitus, dolens, coactus." " Middleton was a man of no common attainments ; his learning was elegant and profound, his judgment acute and polished ; he had a fine and correct taste ; and his style was so pure and so harmonious, so vigorously flowing without being inflated, that, Addison alone excepted, he seems to be without a rival. As to his mind, 1 am compelled with grief and reluctance to confess, it was neither in- genuous nor faithful. " Of the faith of any man, in matters of religion, 1 I presume not to speak with asperity or anger : yet I am vehemently displeased that a man pos- sessed of an elegant and enlightened mind, should deprive Bellenden of the fame lie merited. For I assert, in the most unqualified terms, that Middleton is not only indebted to Bellenden for many useful and splendid materials, but that, wherever it answered his purpose, he has made a mere transcript of his work. He resided at Cambridge, where he possessed all the advantages which that uni- versity and all its valuable libraries afford, to make collections for his undertak- ing. Yet did the man who proposed a system for the regulation of a university library, possess the writings of Bellenden, anticipating all that he professed to accomplish. I cannot deny but that he makes some allusion to this particular work of Bellendenus in his preface, although in a very dark and mysterious manner ; particularly where he speaks of the history of those times, which, who- ever wishes to understand minutely, has only to peruse Cicero's Epistles with at- tention ; of the tediousness of being obliged to peruse Cicero's works two or three times over ; of the care and trouble of consorting for future use various passages scattered through the different volumes ; and, above all, of the very words of Cicero, which give a lustre and authority to a sentiment, when woven originally into the text. " To conclude the whole whatever Middleton ostentatiously declares it to be his wish and his duty to do, had been already done to his hands, faithfully and skilfully by Bellendenus, from the beginning to the end of the work ! It is impossible to dismiss the life and singular writings of William Bellenden, without a passing expression of regret, that so much ingenuity, so much learning, so much labour, may be expended, without producing even the remuneration of a name for Bellenden, to use a phrase of Buchanan, is a light rather than a name. His last work extended to 824 pages in folio, and he contemplated other two of similar size, and equal labour. Yet all this was so futile, that the very 1 Middleton \vns a free-thinker. WILLIAM BERRY. next generation of his own countrymen do not appear to have known tliat such a man ever existed. Even after all the care of bibliographers and others, which has searched out the few facts embraced by this imperfect narrative, the name of Bellenden is only known in connexion with certain works, which are, it is true, reputed to be admirable of their kind, but, for every practical purpose, are almost as entirely lost to the world at large, as those libri perditi of Cicero, ivhicii he has himself alluded to with so much regret Nor can Eellenden be described as a man defrauded by circumstances of that fame which forms at once the best motive and the best reward of literature. He must have written wjth but very slender hopes of reputation through the medium of the press. It thus becomes a curious subject of speculation, that so much pains should have been bestowed where there was so little prospect of its reflecting credit or profit upon the labourer. And yet this seems to be rather in consequence of, than in defi- ance to the want of such temptation. The works of the ancient classics, writ- ten when there was no vehicle but manuscripts for their circulation, and a very small circle in which they could be appreciated, are, of all literary performances, the most carefully elaborated : those of the age when printing was in its infancy, such as the works of Bellenden and other great Latinists, are only a degree in- ferior in accuracy and finish ; while these latter times, so remarkable for the fa- cility with which the works of men of genius are diffused, have produced hardly a single w r ork, which can be pointed to as a perfect specimen of carefid work- manship and faultless taste. There is something not ungratifying in this reflec- tion ; it seems to atone to the great memories of the past, for the imperfect re- wards which they enjoyed in life or in fame. If we could suppose that the lofty spirits who once brightened the lustre of knowledge and literature, and died without any contemporary praise, still look down from their spheres upon the present world, it would gratify the moral faculties to think of the pleasure which they must have, in contemplating their half-forgotten but unsurpassed labours, and in knowing that men yet look back to them as the giants of old who have left no descendants in the land. Thus even the aspirate " name " of Bellenden, which almost seems as if it had never had a mortal man attached to it, might reap a shadowy joy from the present humble effort to render it the justice which has been so long withheld. BERNARD, made abbot of Aberbrothirk in 13)3, and the first chancellor of king Robert Bruce after his assumption of the crown in 1306, deserves a place in this work, as the supposed writer of that spirited remonstrance which the Scot- tish nobility and barons transmitted, in 1318, to the Roman pontiff, asserting the independency of their country. He held the great seal till his death in 1327. Crawford supposes that his surname was Linton. BERRY, WILLIAM, an ingenious artist, was born about the year 1730, and bred to the business of a seal-engraver. After serving an apprenticeship under a Mr Proctor at Edinburgh, he commenced business for himself in that city, and soon became distinguished for the elegance of his designs, and the clearness and sharpness of his mode of cutting. At this time the business of a stone-engraver in the Scottish capital was confined to the cutting of ordinary seals, and the most elaborate work of this kind which they undertook, was that of engraving the armorial bearings of the nobility. Mr Berry's views were for several years con- fined to this common drudgery of his art ; but, by studying gome ancient entaglios, he at length conceived the design of venturing into that higher walk, which might be said to bear the same relation to seal-engraving, which historical paint- ing does to portrait-painting. The subject he chose for his first essay was a head of Sir Isaac Newton, which he executed with such precision and delicacy, as astonished all who had an opportunity of observing it The modesty of 31r WILLIAM BERRY. 213 Berry permitted him to consign this gem to the hands of a friend in a retired situation of life, who had few opportunities of showing it to others. He resumed his wonted drudgery, satisfied, we may suppose, with that secret consciousness of triumphant exertion, which, to some abstracted minds, is not to be increased, but rather spoilt, by the applause of the uninitiated multitude. For many years this ingenious man " narrowed h:s mind " to the cutting of heraldic seals, while in reality, he must have known that his genius fitted him for a competition wit'i the highest triumphs of Italian art When he was occasionally asked to under- take somewhat finer work, he generally found that, though he only deman led perhaps half the money which he could have earned in humbler work during the same space of time, yet even that was grudged by his employers ; and he there- fore found that mere considerations of worldly prudence demanded his almost exclusive attention to the ordinary walk of his profession. Nevertheless, in the course of a few years, the impulse of genius so far over- came his scruples, that he executed various heads, any one of which would have been sufficient to ensure him fame among judges of excellence in this depart- ment of art. Among these were heads of Thomson, author of " the Seasons," Mary Queen of Scots, Oliver Cromwell, Julius Caesar, a young Hercules, and Mr Hamilton of Bangour, the well-known poet Of these only two were copies from the antique ; and they were executed in the finest style of those celebrated enta- glios. The young Hercules, in particular, possessed an unaffected plain simpli- city, a union of youthful innocence with strength and dignity, which struck every beholder as most appropriate' to that mythological personage, while it was, at the same time, the most difficult of all expressions to be hit off by the faithful imitator of nature. As an actor finds it much less difficult to imitate any extra- vagant violence of character, than to represent, with truth and perspicuity, the elegant ease of the gentleman ; so the painter can much more easily delineate the most violent contortions of countenance, than that placid serenity, to express which requires a nice discrimination of such infinitely small degrees of variation in certain lineaments, as totally elude the observation of men, on whose minds nature has not impressed, with her irresistible hand, that exquisite perceptive faculty, which constitutes the essence of genius in the fine arts. BeiTy possessed this perceptive faculty to a degree which almost proved an obstruction, rather than a help, in his professional career. In his best perform- ances, he himself remarked defects which no one else perceived, and which he believed might have been overcome by greater exertion, if for that greater exer- tion he could have spared the necessary time. Thus, while others applauded his entaglios, he looked upon them with a morbid feeling of vexation, arising from the sense of that struggle which his immediate personal wants constantly main- tained with the nobler impulses of art, and to which his situation in the world promised no speedy cessation. This gave him an aversion to the higher depart- ment of his art, which, though indulged to his own temporary comfort, and the advantage of his family, was most unfortunate for the world. In spite of every disadvantage, the works of Mr Berry, few as they were in number, became gradually known in society at large ; and some of his pieces were even brought into competition, by some distinguished cognoscenti, with those of Piccler at Home, who had hitherto been the unapproached sovereign ot this department of the arts. Although the experience of Piccler was that of a constant practitioner, while Mr Berry had only attempted a few pieces at long intervals in the course of a laborious life ; although the former li ved in a country where every artificial object was attuned to the principles of art, while Mr Berry was reared in a soil remarkable for the absence of all such advantages ; the lat- ter was by many good judges placed above his Italian contemporary. The re- 214 WILLIAM BERRY. spective works of the two artists were well known to each other ; and each de- clared, with that manly ingenuousness, which very high genius alone can con- fer on the human mind, that the other was greatly his superior. Mr Berry possessed not merely the art of imitating busts or figures set before him, in which he could observe and copy the prominence or depression of the parts : but he possessed a faculty which presupposes a much nicer discrimination : that of being able to execute a figure in relievo, with perfect justness in all it> parts, which was copied from a painting or drawing upon a flat surface. This was fairly put to the test in the head he executed of Hamilton of Bangour That gentleman had been dead several years, when his relations wished to havo a head of him executed by Berry. The artist had himself never seen 3Ir Ham- ilton, and there remained no picture of him but an imperfect sketch, which was by no means a striking likeness. This was put into the hands of Mr Berry, by a person who had known the deceased poet, and who pointed out the defects ol the resemblance in the best way that words can be made to correct things of this nature ; and from this picture, with the ideas that 3Ir Berry had imbibed from the corrections, he made a head, which every one who knew Mr Hamilton, al- lowed to be one of the most perfect likenesses that could be wished for. In this, as in all his works, there was a correctness in the outline, and a truth and delicacy in the expression of the features, highly emulous of the best antiques ; which were, indeed, the models on which he fonned his taste. The whole number of heads executed by Mr Berry did not exceed a dozen ; but, besides these, he executed some full-length figures of both men and animals, in his customary style of elegance. That attention, however, to the interests of a numerous family, which a man of sound principles, as Mr Berry was, could never allow himself to lose sight of, made him forego those agreeable exertions, for the more lucrative, though less pleasing employment, of cutting heraldic seals, which may be said to have been his constant employment from morning to night, for forty years together, with an assiduity that almost surpasses belief. In this department, he was, without dispute, the first artist of his time ; but even here, that modesty which was so peculiarly his own, and that invariable desire of giv- ing perfection to every thing he put out of his hand, prevented him from drawing such emoluments from his labours as they deserved. Of this the following anec- dote will serve as an illustration, and as an additional testimony of his very great skilL Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, on succeeding to his title and estates, was desirous of having a seal cut, with his arms properly blazoned upon it. But, as there were no fewer than thirty-two compartments in the shield, which was of necessity confined to a very small space, so as to leave room for the supporters and other ornaments, within the compass of a seal of ordinary size, he found it a matter of great difficulty to get it executed. Though a native of Scotland himself, the noble Duke had no idea that there was a man of first-rate eminence in this art in Edinburgh ; and accordingly he had applied to the best seal-en- gravers in London and Paris, all of whom declared it to be beyond their power. At this time, Berry was mentioned to him, with such powerful recommendations, that he was induced to pay him a visit, and found him, as usual, seated at his wheel The gentleman who had mentioned Mr Berry's name to the Duke, accompanied him on his visit This person, without introducing the Duke, showed Mr Berry the impression of a seal which the Duchess-dowager had got cut a good many years before by a Jew in London, now dead, and which had been shown to others as a pattern ; asking him if he would cut a seal the same as that. After examining it a little, Mr Berry answered readily, that he would. The Duke, at once pleased and astonished, exclaimed, " Will you, indeed!" Mr Berry, who thought that this implied some doubt of his ability to perform HUGH BINNING. 215 what he undertook, was a little piqued, and turning round to the Duke, whom fie had never before seen, he said, " Yes, Sir ; if I do not make a better seal than this, I will charge no payment for it.'' The Duke, highly pleased, left the pattern with Mr Berry, and went away. The original contained, indeed, the various devices of the thirty-two compartments distinctly enough to be seen ; but none of the colours were expressed. Mr Berry, in proper time, finished the seal ; on which the figures were not only done with superior elegance, but the colours on every part so distinctly marked that a painter could delineate the whole, or a herald blazon it, with perfect accuracy. For this extraordinary and most ingenious labour, he charged no more than thirty-two guineas, tbough the pattern seal had cost -seventy-five. Thus it was, that, though possessed of talents unequalled in their kind, at least in Britain, and assiduity not to be surpassed, observing at the same time the strictest economy in his domestic arrangements Mr Berry died at last, in circumstances far from affluent, June 3d, 1783, in the fifty-third year of his age, leaving a numerous family of children. It had been the lot of this ingenious man, to toil unceasingly for a whole life, without obtain- ing any other reward than the common boon of mere subsistence, while his abili- ties, in another sphere, or in an age more qualified to appreciate and employ them, might have enabled him to attain at once to fame and fortune in a rery few years. His art, it may be remarked, has made no particular progress in Scotland, in consequence of his example. The genius of Berry was solitary, both in respect of place and time, and has never been rivalled by any other of his countrymen. It must be recorded, to the honour of this unrequited genius, that his character in private life was as amiable and unassuming as his talents were great ; and that his conduct on all occasions was ruled by the strictest prin- ciples of honour and integrity. BINNING, HUGH, an extraordinary instance of precocious learning and genius, was the son of John Binning of Dalvennan, a landed gentleman of Ayrshire. He appears to have been born about the year 1627. In his earliest years he outstripped all his seniors in the acquisition of Latin. At Glasgow college, which he entered in his fourteenth year, lie distinguished himself very highly in philo- sophy. What was to others only gained by hard study, seemed to be intuitively known by Binning. After taking the degree of Master of Arts, he began to study for the church. When Mr James Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Stair, vacated the chair of philosophy at Glasgow, Binning, though not yet nineteen, stood a competitor with some men of graver years and very respectable acquirements, and gained the object of his ambition by the pure force of merit. Though un- prepared for entering upon his duties, no deficiency was remarked. He was one of the first in Scotland to reform philosophy from the barbarous jargon of the schools. While fulfilling the duties of his chair in the most satisfactory manner, he continued his study of theology, and a vacancy occurring in the church of Govan, near Glasgow, he received a call to be its minister. Here he married Barbara Simpson, the daughter of a presbyterian clergyman in Ireland. As a preacher, Mr Binning's fame was very great : his knowledge was extensive, and there was a fervour in his eloquence which bore away the hearts of his congrega- tion, as it were, to heaven. At the division of the church into Kesolutioners and Protesters, he took the latter and more zealous side, but yet was too full of virtuous and benevolent feeling to be a violent partizan. In order to heal the difference as much as possible, he wrote a treatise on Christian love. W hen Oliver Cromwell came to Glasgow, he caused a dispute to be held between his own independent clergymen, and the Scottish presbyterian ministers. Binning having nonplussed his opponents, Cromwell asked the name of " that bold young man." On being told that he was called Mr Hugh Binning, the sectarian gene- 216 CHARLES BISSET. ral said, " lie hath bound well, indeed, but '' (chipping his hand upon his sword, " this will loose all again." This excellent young preacher died of consumption, 1653, in his twenty-sixth year, leaving behind him a reputation for piety, vir- tue, and learning, such as has rarely been attained by any individual under that age. Besides his treatise on Christian love, he wrote many miscellaneous pieces, of a pious nature, which were published, in 1732, in one volume quarto. A selection from these, under the title of " Evangelical Beauties of Hugh Binning," appeared in 182i), with a memoir of the author by the llev John Brown t>i Whitburn. BISSAT, OR B1SSART, PBTER, professor of the Canon Law in the University of Bononia, was born in Fife in the reign of James V., being a descendant ol Thomas Bissat, or Bissart, who was Earl of Fife in the reign of David II. He received instructions in grammar, philosophy, and the laws, at the University of St Andrews, and afterwards perfected his education at that of Paris. Having then travelled into Italy, he was honoured by the University of Bononia with the degree of Doctor of Laws, and shortly after became professor of the Canon Law in that seminary, in which situation he continued for several years, " with great applause." Bissat appears to have been a man of general accomplishment a poet, an orator, and a philosopher ; but his forte lay in the Canon Law. His various writings were published at Venice in 15o5, in quarto, under the title, " Patricii Bissarti Opera Omnia, viz. Poemata, Orationes, Lectiones Feriales, et Liber de Irregularitate." The last of these compositions was a commentary on that part of the Canon Law which gives the reasons assigned by the Church of Home for excluding certain laymen from the clergy. 1 Bissat died in the latter part of the year 1568. BISSET, CHARLES, an ingenious physician and writer on Fortification, was born at Glenalbert, near Dunkeld, in the year 1717. It is alone known, re- garding his parentage, that his father was a lawyer of some eminence, and a distinguished Latinist After a course of medical studies at Edinburgh, he \v;is appointed, in 1740, second surgeon of the Military Hospital in Jamaica, and spent several years in the West India Islands, and in Admiral Vernon's fleet, in 1 Of these, as detailed by Bissat, an abstract may be interesting to the British reader, now happily so little familiar with the systems of the Catholic Church. Tin: primitive Christians, in admitting the clergy, observed exactly the rules laid down by St Paul in the first ep'stle to Timothy. Yet sometimes, as we learn from Jst Cyprian, at the pressing in- stance of the people, persons of noted merit, who refused through humility, were compelled to enter. By the canons, however, a man required to be a deacon before he could be a priest, and a priest before he could be a bishop. It was a general principle of the church, that the clergy should be chosen from the most holy of the laity, and, therefore, all liable to any re- proach in their lives and conversations, were excluded. Agreeably to this principle, which agreed with the injunction of St Paul, that they should be blameless and without reproach, the first council of Nice excluded all those, specifically, who, after baptism, had been guilty of any sort of crime, such as heresy, homicide, or adultery, nor was penance any pallia- tive, seeing that the memory of the offence always remained ; while it was to be expected lliat those whose lives were without stain should be preferred to those who had fallen. Thus all persons who had performed penance were excluded. Those also were deemed irregular, and not entitled to admittance, who had killed any person, bv accident or in self-defence, or who had borne arms even in a just war ; who had twice married, or married a widow ; or who engaged much in worldly affairs ; all of which circumstances were held as derogating in some degree from the necessary purity of the iinli\ idual. The only other moral disqua- lification was ignorance: the physical disqualification-, were almost equally numerous. All deaf, dumb, or blind persons were excluded, as unable to perform their functions in a pro- per manner. All persons who were lame, or had any deformity calculated to create an aversion in the people, were declared unfit for orders. Madness and self-mutilation were disqualifications. All persons born out of wedlock were excluded, because, however inno- cent the individual in his own person, the associations which the sight of them was calcu- lated to awaken, were not favourable to virtue. Slaves, servants, children, and mona>l.c clergy without the consent of their superiors, were excluded. CHARLES BISSET. 217 order to become acquainted with the diseases of the torrid zone. The physician who studies new and local forms of disease, with their symptoms, and natural and accidental terminations, whatever may be his success as a medical practi- tioner, may justly be said to perform good service to his kind. His observations are not of less value than those of the cautious and expert navigator, who searches and describes shores hitherto unknown. But, while thus seeking to avert disease from others, Dr Bisset became himself liable to its ravages. Having, in 1745, contracted ill health at Greenwich in Jamaica, he was under the necessity of resigning his situation as second surgeon, in order to return to Britain. In May, 1746, he purchased an ensigncy in the 42nd (Highland) regiment, so well known for a long train of military glories, and which was then commanded by Lord John Murray. By this transition, his attention was turned from the medi- cal to the military pi-ofession, and fortification became his favourite study. After a fruitless descent on the coast of Brittany in September, 1748, and passing a winter at Limerick in Ireland, the regiment was, in the beginning of next cam- paign, brought into action at Sandberg, near Hulst, in Dutch Flanders, where one Dutch and two English regiments suffered very severely. Here Dr Bisset employed himself" in drawing a sketch of the enemy's approaches, and some time after, in another of Bergen-op-Zoom, with the permanent lines, the environs, and the enemy's first parallel ; which were presented by his colonel to the Duke of Cumberland, the commander-in-chief. The Duke was so much pleased with these specimens of Dr Bisset's military knowledge, that he ordered him to attend the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, and give due attention daily to the progress of both the attack and the defence, in order to form a journal of the whole pro- ceedings. This distinguished duty Dr Bisset undertook with a modest reluc- tance, the result rather of inexperience than of any consciousness of want of knowledge. The result, however, was highly honourable to him, His journals, duly illustrated with plans, were daily delivered to Lord John Murray, who for- warded them every second or third day, to the Duke, who was then at Maestricht, at the head of the allied army, observing the motions of the French army under Marshal Saxe. His royal highness was pleased to express his approbation, by recommending Dr Bisset to the Duke of Montagu, then master-general of the ordnance, who honoured him with a warrant as engineer extraordinary to the brigade of engineers ; he was at the same time promoted to a lieutenancy in the army. At the end of the war, being placed on half-pay, he had full leisure to pursue his studies in fortification, and also to visit the principal specimens of the .art upon the Continent. The result was his " Essay on the Theory and Construc- tion of Fortifications," which appeared in 1751, in 8vo. His attention being now disengaged from this pursuit, he resumed his original profession, and, for the sake of a salubrious air, which was necessary to his weakly constitution, retired to practise at the village of Skelton, in Cleveland, Yorkshire, where he spent all the remainder of his life. In 1755, when the Seven Years' War was impending, he published a " Treatise on the Scurvy, with Remarks on the Cure of Scorbutic Ulcers," which he dedicated to Viscount An- son, and the other Lords of the Admiralty. In 1762, appeared his "Essay on th^ Medical Constitution of Great Britain," which he inscribed to his friend Sir John Pringle. In this work he shows the effects of the change of weather, and of the seasons, on the diseases of Great Britain ; and at the conclusion is an interesting paper on the virtues of the herb BearVfoot, in the cure of worms. In 1765, the University of St Andrews conferred upon him the degree of M.D. In 1766, he published, at Newcastle, a volume of " Medical Essays and Observa- tions," in which are upwards of twenty papers on the climate and diseases of the 218 JOSEPH BLACK, M.D. West Indies, which his experience in that country had enabled him to illustrate in a most satisfactory manner; besides some others on the chronic diseases of Great Britain, particularly the hooping-<;.>ugh and the scorbutic itch, as well as .nany chirurgical remarks, which show a mini Lent on the improvement of his profession. A few years before his death, he deposited, in the Library of the Infirmary at Leeds, a manuscript of medical observations, in octavo, and extend- ing to nearly seven hundred pages; for which the physicians of that institution honoured him with a formal vote of thanks. Dr Bisset also presented a manu- script treatise on fortification to the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.) ; which was deposited in his Royal Highness's private library. These, with a small published treatise on naval tactics, and a few political papers, constituted the whole of the intellectual exertions of this distinguished man ; who died at Knayton, near Thirsk, in May 1791, aged seventy-five years. BLACK, JOSEPH, M.D. " the illustrious Nestor (as he lias been termed by Lavoisier) of the chemical revolution," was not a native of Scotland, having been born on the banks of the Garonne, in France ; but as his father was of Scottish extraction, while his mother was a native of that country, and as Scot- land, further, was the scene not only of the better part of his life, but of all those exertions in science which will transmit his name to posterity, it seems pro- per that he should obtain a place in this work, even at the expense of a slight violation of its leading principle. John Black, the father of the illustrious subject of this memoir, was a native of Belfast, descended, as already mentioned, from a Scottish family, which had for some time been settled there. For the purpose of carrying on the profession of a wine-merchant, he resided chiefly at Bourdeaux, where he married a daugh- ter of Mr Robert Gordon of Billhead in Aberdeenshire ; a gentleman who also resided at Bourdeaux, and was engaged in the same trade. The sister of Mrs Black was mother to Mr Russel, professor of natural philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, and their aunt was mother to Dr Adam Ferguson, professor of moral philosophy in the same college, and author of the History of the Roman Republic. While Mr John Black resided at Bourdeaux, he was honoured with the friendship of Montesquieu, who was president of the parliament or court of justice in that province. " My father," says Dr Black, " was honoured with President Montesquieu's friendship, on account of his good character and virtues. He had no ambition to be very rich ; but was cheerful and contented, benevolent and liberal-minded. He was industrious and prudent in business, of the strictest probity and honour, very temperate and regular in his manner of life. He and my mother, who was equally domestic, educated thirteen of their children, eight sons and five daughters, who all grew up to men and women, and were settled in different places. My mother taught her children to read English, there being no school for that purpose at Bourdeaux." The regard which Montesquieu en- t'jrtainod for Mr Black was testified in the warmest terms, when the latter was proposing to return to his native country. " I cannot," said he, on that occasion, " be reconciled to the thoughts of your leaving Bourdeaux. I lose the most agreeable pleasure I had, that of seeing you often, and forgetting myself with you.'' , Dr Black was born in the year 1728. In 1740, a few years before his fath >r retired from business, he was sent home, in order to have the education of a British subject After spending some time at the schools of Belfast, he was sent in 1746, to complete his studies at the college of Glasgow. Here his attention became decidedly fixed upon physical science; insomuch that, on being desired to select a profession, he chose that of medicine, on account of its allowing tho greatest scope for such studies. It was about this time that Dr Cullen had been EIPM [ :tEMI3TRY. UNIVERSITY OF GLASC-OW- BLACK1E & r ' JOSEPH BLACK, M.D. 219 appointed lecturer on chemistry in Glasgow university. Hitherto this science had been only treated as a curious, and, in some respects, a useless art. This great man, conscious of his own strength, and taking a wide and comprehensive view, saw the unoccupied field of philosophical chemistry open before him. He was satisfied that it was susceptible of great improvement, by means of liberal inquiry and rational investigation. It was perhaps the good fortune of Dr Black, in falling under such a master, that gave his mind a peculiar bent in favour of this department of physical science. His previous acquirements and extraordin- ary aptitude speedily became known to Dr Cullen, who was at all times remark- able for the personal attentions he paid to his pupils. Black became a valuable assistant to Dr Cullen in his chemical operations, and his experiments were some- times publicly adduced in the lecture, as a sufficient authority for vai-ious new facts. Thus commenced a friendship between two great men, which was never afterwards interrupted, except by the Great Divider of kindred minds and loving hearts, and which was of considerable service to mankind. In 1751, Black was sent to Edinburgh to complete the course of his medical studies. At this time, the mode of action of lithotriptic medicines, but parti- cularly lime water, in alleviating the pains of stone and gravel, divided the opin- ions of professors and practitioners. This subject attracted the attention of Black, and it appears from some of his memorandums, that he at first held the opinion, that the causticity of alkalis was owing to the igneous matter which they derive from quick lime. Having prosecuted his experiments on magnesia, the grand secret of nature, which for ever will be associated with his name, was laid open to him. He perceived that the acrimony of these substances was not owing to their combination with igneous particles ; that it was their peculiar property ; and that they lost this property, and became mild, by combining with a certain portion of air, to which he gave the name of FIXED AIR ; because it was fixed or become solid in the substances, into the composition of which it entered. He discovered, for instance, that a cubic inch of marble consisted of half its weight of pure lime, and a quantity of air equal to six gallons measure. This grand discovery, which forms one of the most important eras of chemical science, was the subject of his inaugural essay, on obtaining his degree as doctor of medicine ; and the reputation it acquired for him, was the means, in 1756, of placing him in the chair of chemistry at Glasgow, then vacated by Dr Cullen, who was trans- ferred to the same chair in the college of Edinburgh. The theory of fixed air (now termed by chemists, carbonic acid gas,) was speedily propagated on the con- tinent, where at this time chemistry was occupying the attention of many great men. In Germany, Dr Black's opinions, though placed on the firmest basis by experiments, met with much opposition, which, it appears, gave him an uneasi- ness not to have been expected from his philosophical, and rather indolent char- acter. In France, however, he was very differently treated. Lavoisier, in send- ing him a copy of his treatise on respiration, thus expressed himself: " It is but just you should be one of the first to receive information of the progress made in a career which you yourself have opened, and in which all of us here consider ourselves your disciples." To this Black replied, with a just admiration of what the French chemists were doing, and without reference to any merit of his own. On his assuming the chair of chemistry at Glasgow, that of anatomy was also imposed upon him ; but this latter he soon exchanged for that of medicine, for which, it would appear, he was better qualified. He gave great satisfaction by the perspicuity and simplicity, the caution and moderation, which he discovered in his medical lectures. At the same time, he became a favourite practitioner in the city, where his engaging appearance and manners, snd the benevolent and unaffected interest which he took in all the cases entrusted to his care, ren- 2'20 JOSEPH BLACK, M.D. dered him a most welcome visitor in every family. His principal hiend at Glasgow was his associate Dr Adam Smith, professor of moral philosophy, with whom he had become intimate, when attending the university as a student. A peculiar simplicity and sensibility, an incorruptible integrity, the strictest deli- racy and correctness of manners, marked the character of each of the philoso- phers, and firmly bound them in the closest union. " It seems to have been between the year 175J and 17G3, 1 that his specula- tions concerning HEAT, which had long occupied his thoughts, were brought to maturity. And when it is considered by what simple experiments, by what familiar observations, Dr Black illustrated the Laws of fluidity and evaporation, it appears wonderful that they had not long before been observed and demon- strated. They are, however, less obvious than might at first sight be imagined, and to have a distinct and clear conception of those seemingly simple processes of nature, required consideration and reflection. If a piece of wood, a piece of lead, and a piece of ice, are placed in a temperature much inferior to that of the body ; and if we touch the piece of wood with the hand, it feels cold ; if we touch the piece cf lead, it feels colder still ; but the piece of ice feels colder than either. Now, the first suggestion of sense is, that we receive cold from the wood ; that we re- ceive more from the lead ; and most of all from the ice ; and that the ice con- tinues to be a source of cold till the whole be melted. But an inference pre- cisely the contrary to all this is made by him, whose attention and reflection has been occupied with this subject. He infers that the wood takes a little heat from the hand, but is soon heated so much as to take no more. The lead takes more heat before it be as much satiated ; and the ice continues to feel equally cold, and to carry off heat as fast as in the first moment, till the whole be melted. This, then, was the inference made by Dr Blade " Boerhaave has recorded an interesting observation by Fahrenheit, namely, that water would sometimes grow considerably colder than melting snow without freezing, and would freeze in a moment when shaken or disturbed ; and in the act cf freezing give out many degrees of heat. Founded on this observation, it appears that Dr Black entertained some vague notion or conjecture, that the heat which was received by the ice, during its conversion into water, was not lest, but was still contained in the water. And he hoped to verify this conjec- tuie, by making a comparison of the time required to raise a pound of water one degree in its temperature, with the time required to melt a pound of ice, both being supposed to receive the heat equally fast. And that he might ascertain how much heat was extricated during congelation, he thought of comparing the time required to depress the temperature of a pound of water one degree, with the time required for freezing it entirely. The plan of this series of experiments occurred to him during the summer season. But for want of ice, which he could not then procure, he had no opportunity of putting them to the test He there- fore waited impatiently for the winter. The winter arrived, and the decisive experiment was performed in the month of December I7(il. From this experi- ment it appeared that as much heat was taken up by the ice, during its liquefac- tion, as would have raised the water 140 degrees in its temperature, and on the ether hand, that exactly the same quantity of heat was given out during the congelation of the water. But this experiment, the result of which Dr Black eagerly longed for, only informed him how much heat was absorbed by the \CM during liquefaction, was retained by the water while it remained fluid, and was again emitted by it in the process of freezing. But his mind was deeply im- pressed with the truth of the doctrine, by reflecting on the observations that 1 Thn following most interesting account of one of the principal discoveries in modern sci- ence is from a biographical memoir, prefixed by professor Holjisun to Dr Black's lectures. JOSEPH BLACK, M.D. 221 presented themselves when a frost or thaw happened to prevail. The hills are uct at once cleared of snow during the sunshine of the brightest winter day, nor were the ponds suddenly covered with ice during a single frosty night Much heat is absorbed and fixed in the water during the melting of the snow ; and on the other hand, while the water is changed into ice, much heat is extricated During a thaw, the thermometer sinks when it is removed from the air, and placed in the melting snow ; and during severe frost, it rises when plunged into freezing water. In the first case, the snow receives heat ; and in the last, the water allows the heat to escape again. These were fair and unquestionable in ferences, and now they appear obvious and easy. But although many ingenious and acute philosophers had been engaged in the same investigations, and had employed the same facts in their disquisitions, those obvious inferences were en tirely overlooked. It was reserved for Dr Black to remove the veil which hid this mystery of nature, and by this important discovery, to establish an era in the progress of chemical science, one of the brightest, perhaps, which has yet occurred in its history." Dr Black explained his theory of latent heat such was the name he himself gave to it to the members of a literary society, April 23, 1762, and afterwards laid before his students a detailed view of the extensive and beneficial effects of this habitude in the grand economy of nature. From observing the analogy between the cessation of expansion by the thermometer, during the liquefaction of the ice, and during the conversion of water into steam, Dr Black, having explained the one, thought that the phenomena of boiling and evaporation would admit of a similar explanation. He was so convinced of the truth of this theory, that he taught it in his lectures in 1761, before he had made a single experi- ment on the subject At this period, his prelections on the subject of evapora- tion were of great advantage to Mr James Watt, afterwards so distinguished for his application of steam power. His discovery, indeed, may be said to have laid the foundation of that great practical use of steam, which has conferred so im- mense a blessing upon the present age. In 1766, on Dr Cullen being removed from the chair of chemistry at Edin- burgh, to that of medicine, Dr Black, as formerly, supplied the vacant place. In this new scene, he saw that his talents would become more conspicuous, and of more extensive utility. He was therefore encouraged to devote himself, with still more enthusiastic zeal, to his duties as a chemical teacher. In this he was so far successful, that chemistry at length became a fashionable study in the Scot- tish capital, and a necessary part of the education of every gentleman. After this period, however, he retired from the field of chemical research, which now began to be occupied by a great number of distinguished philosophers. The cause of this was the delicate state of his health, aided, perhaps, a little by that indolence, or rather perhaps absence of ambitious motive, which has been already alluded to. It is to be regretted that, for the same reason, he can scarcely be said to have published any thing to the world, by which his discoveries might be permanently secured to the honour of his own name. From the period of his accession to the chemical chair at Edinburgh, he was, for thirty years, a most distinguished member of the professional society, which then adorned the capital, and has since given such an Augustan eclat to the latter age of the eigh- teenth century. Whatever obstruction his health proved in the way of publish- ing, it never marred the active discharge of his duties. His courses became every year plainer and more familiar, and were attended by a larger number of pupils. The simplicity and elegance of his experiments were always much ad- mired. His manner and appearance were peculiarly pleasing. His voice in lecturing was lo\v and fine, and his articulation so distinct that it was perfectly 222 JOHN BLACKADDER. well heard by a large audience. His discourse was remarkable for plainness and perspicuity ; all his illustrations, whether by experiment, or by reference to the processes of nature, were quite apposite ; his hearers rested with the most entire confidence on his conclusions, and even the most illiterate could not mistake his sentiments. Dr Black's conduct in private life was marked by a striking degree of deco- rum, without the slightest approach to formality. His habit of studying physical science rendered him very much a man of facts and demonstrations : he is said to have been so entirely destitute of fancy, or to have so effectually repressed that faculty, that he never was known to utter a joke. In his domestic affairs, he was rigidly frugal and methodical ; yet his house was open to an enlightened hospitality, in which he enjoyed as much of the society of his friends as his deli- cate health would permit. His chief friends were Smith, Hume, Carlyle, Home, and Hutton. The last was closely connected with him in philosophical pursuits, as well as in the bonds of private friendship notwithstanding that there were some striking points of difference between the two men. In the latter days of Dr Black, he sunk into a low state of health, and only preserved himself from the shocks of the weather in this variable climate by a degree of care almost fan- tastic. Thus he spun out the thread of life to the last fibre. It was his gene- rous and manly wish that he might never live to be a burden to his friends ; and never was the wish more completely gratified. On the 26th of November, 1799, and in the seventy-first year of his age, he expired, without any convulsion, shock, or stupor, to announce or retard the approach of death. Being at table with his usual fare some bread, a few prunes, and a. measured quantity of milk, diluted with water, and having the cup in his hand when the last stroke of the pulse was to be given, he had set it down upon his knees, which were joined together, and kept it steady with his hand in the manner of a person perfectly at ease, and in this attitude expired, without spilling a drop, and without a writhe in his countenance ; as if an experiment had been required, to show to his friends the facility with which he departed. His servant opened the door to tell him that some one had left his name, but getting no answer, stepped about half-way towards him, and seeing him sitting in that easy posture, supporting his basin of milk with one hand, he thought that he had dropped asleep, which lie had sometimes seen happen after his meals. The man went back and shut the door, but before he got down stairs, some anxiety that he could not account for, made him return, and look again at his master. Even then, he was satisfied, after coming pretty near, and turned to go away, but again returned, and com- ing quite close, found his master without life. Dr Black, who had never been mar- ried, left more money than any one had thought he could have acquired in the course of his career. It was disposed of by his will in a manner highly charac- teristic. Being divided into ten thousand shares, it was parcelled out to a nu- merous list of relations in shares, in numbers, or fractions of shares, according to the degree in which they were proper objects of his care or solicitude. BLACKADDER, JOHN", a distinguished preacher of the time of the persecution, was the representative of an ancient but decayed family Blackadder of Tullial- lan and was born in the year 1615. He was nephew to principal Strang of (jlasgOAV, and grand-nephew to the famous chorographer Timothy Font. His theological education took place under the eye of the former of these eminent men, and having been duly licensed by the presbyterian church, then in its high- est purity and most triumphant domination, he received a call, in 1652, to the parish-church of Troqueer, in the neighbourhood of Dumfries. Previous to this period, he had married the daughter of a wealthy merchant of that town, named Haning. Mr Blackadder commenced his ministerial labours with a zeal which JOHN BLACKADDER. 223 seems to have been singular even in those times. He, in the first place, gathered around him a very active body of elders, whom he set to work in every direc- tion, upon the task of cultivating the religious mind of the parish. He also instituted a very strict system of moral discipline among his flock. Not content with the weekly sermons on Sunday, he instituted lectures on the ordinary days, which were attended by many persons from a distance. He also projected a plan for occasion- ally interchanging duty with the neighbouring parochial clergy, which was carried into effect within the entire limits of the presbytery, and is said to have been attended with the best results. The church at this time rested undisturbed under the sway of Cromwell, who gave it toleration in every respect except as a collective body ; 3Ir IBlnckadder, therefore, found no bar to his progress, which was so exceedingly rapid, that in less than two years he had the satisfaction of seeing a thorough reformation in the devotional habits of his parishioners. Evil days, however, came at last. In 1662, the episcopal form of church-government was forced by the restored house of Stuart upon a people who were generally repug- nant to it Mr Blackadder, so far from complying with the new system, employed himself for several successive Sundays in exposing what he considered its un- lawfulness, and, in his own words, " entered his dissent in heaven " against it. The presbytery of Dumfries, upon which the influence of so zealous a mind was probably very great, gave a positive refusal to an order of the parliament to celebrate the anniversary of the restoration at a festival. A party of fifty horse was accordingly sent to bring the whole of this refractory band of churchmen to Edinburgh. On the day of their arrival at Dumfries, Mr Blackadder was engaged to preach in the town church. He was entreated not to appear in the pulpit, lest he should exasperate the soldiers against him ; but instead of taking this advice, he desired the gallery to be cleared, in order that the military might attend his sermon. They did so, and listened decorously to the denunciations which he could not help uttering against all who had been concerned in the late religious defections. He, and some of his brethren, were next day conducted in an honourable captivity to the capital, where he underwent some examinations, but was speedily released, by the interest of his friends. He was now, however, obliged to demit his charge, in favour of an episcopal incumbent On the last Sunday of October, he preached a farewell sermon to his attached flock. ''This," we are informed, " was a day of anxious expectation throughout the country, and made an impression on the minds of those who witnessed it never to be forgotten. The church of Troqueer stood (as it now does) upon a gentle emi- nence on the banks of the Nith, commanding an extensive view of the surround- ing country, which, in the neighbourhood of Dumfries, presents a delightful variety of local scenery. On the morning of that memorable Sabbath, Mr Black- adder had risen early from prayer and private communion. He stepped forth to meditate on the subject of the day. There was a gloom and heaviness in the atmosphere that seemed to correspond with the general melancholy. A fog, or ihick haze, that covered the face of the earth, as with a grey mantle, had retired from the vale of Nith towards the mountains. As he paced his little garden with a slow and pensive step, his contemplations were suddenly interrupted by the tolling of the morning bells, several of which, in the adjacent parishes, were distinctly audible from the uncommon stillness of the air. These hallowed chimes, once the welcome summons to the house of prayer, now sounded like the knell of their expiring liberties, reminding him how many of his brethren were, like himself, preparing to bid their last adieu, amidst the tears and bless- ings of their people. At this signal of retirement, he betook himself to the du- ties of the closet, to hold nearer intercourse with heaven, and fortify himself for the solemn occasion. 224 JOHN BLACKADDER. " The people, at an early hour, had been straggling on the heigH, but kept aloof from the church, unwilling to put their minister to hazard by convening in multitudes, which had been discharged as a breach of peace and good order. They collected by degrees in small scattered groups about the church-yard, occu- pied in dark conjectures, and waiting the minister's approach with extreme anxiety. Mr Blackadder made his appearance with his wonted firmness and composure, and with the same placid serenity of countenance for which he was remarkable. The audience was not numerous, but every feature appeared set- tled into a deep and earnest concern. Most of them were dissolved in tears, and at many parts of the discourse, there were loud and involuntary bursts of sorrow. " Towards the middle of the sermon, an alarm Mas given that a party of sol- diers from Dumfries were on their march to seize him, and had crossed the bridge. Upon this he closed hastily, pronounced the blessing, and retired to his chamber. The military surrounded the church-yard, and, as the people de- parted, they took down the names of all those who belonged to Dumfries, or any of the other parishes, as the law had affixed a penalty of twenty shillings Scots on every person absent from his own church. They offered violence to none, and went away without entering the manse, being assured that no strangers were there. When they were gone, the minister assembled the remains of the congre- gation in his own house, and finished the sermon, ' standing on the stair-head, both the upper and lower flat being crowded to the fulL "The people seeird very loath to depart, lingering in suspense about the door, expressing their concern for his safety, and their willingness to shed their blood in his defence. Mr Blackadder conjured them to have regard to the peace of the country, and give no handle to their adversaries by any disturbance. ' Go,' said he, and fend [provide] for yourselves : the hour is come when the shepherd is smitten, and the flock shall be scattered. Many are this day mourn- ing for the desolations of Israel, and weeping, like the prophet, between the porch and the altar. God's heritage has become the prey of the spoiler ; the mountain of the house of the Lord as the high places of the forest When the faithful pastors are removed, hirelings shall intrude, whom the great Shepherd i^ever sent, who will devour the flock, and tread down the residue with their teet. As for me, I have done my duty, and now there is no time to evade. I recommend you to Him, who is able to keep you from falling, and am ready, through grace, to be disposed of as the Lord pleases.' '' l After this solemn and affecting scene, Mr Blackadder went, witli his wife and numerous family, to reside at Caitloch in the parish of Glencairn, a wilder and more central part of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, Here he soon attracted the attention of the authorities by the crowds which he collected to hear his oc- casional preachings, and he was therefore obliged to remove. For some years ifter this period, he appears to have wandered through the country, preaching whenever he could find a proper opportunity. In 1670, having performed wor- ship at a conventicle near Dunfermline, where the people had armed themselves for self-defence, he was summoned before the privy council, but contrived to elude their power. When the search was a little slackened, he renewed his practice of itinerant preaching, which he not only conceived to be no offence against human laws, but a duty solemnly enjoined by the word of God. On one occasion, he preached at Kinkell, near St Andrews: the people flocked From that metropolitan city to hear him, notwithstanding all the injunctions and sur- I'eillance of Archbishop Sharpe. It is said, that, on Sharpe desiring the provost to send out the militia to disperse the congregation, he was informed that it was 1 Crichton's Life of John Blackadder, 12mo, 1S23. EtgWod flOKflAS i{LACML(DK B Po : THOMAS BLACKLOCK. 225 impossible the militia had gone already as worshippers. In 1674, he was out- lawed, and a reward of a thousand merks was offered for his apprehension ; but he nevertheless continued to preach occasionally to large assemblages in the fields. What may appear surprising, he often resided in the capital, without undergoing any annoyance, and contrived, notwitlistanding the migratory nature of his life, to rear a large and well-instructed family. It does not appear that he approved of the insurrection of his friends, which was suppressed at BothwelL Though engaged in duty immediately before this event, he fortunately was con- fined during the whole period of its continuance, by a rheumatism, and therefore escaped all blame on that account In 1680, he made a voyage to Holland, and settled his son at Leyden, as a student of medicine ; a circumstance which proves that the persecution to which tbese clergymen were subjected was not uniformly attended by pecuniary destitution. After spending several months in Holland, lie returned to Scotland, and, in the succeeding year, was apprehended, and con- fined in the state-prison upon the Bass. He remained here for four years, when at length his health declined so much, on account of the insalubrious nature of liis prison, that his friends made interest to procure his liberation upon the plea that he must otherwise sink under his malady. The government at first mocked him Mith a proposal to transfer him to Haddington orDunbar jail, but at length, on a more earnest and better attested remonstrance, offered to give him liberty to reside in Edinburgh, under a bond for five thousand merits. Ere this tender mercy could be made available, he died in his islet prison. December, 1685, hav- ing nearly completed his seventieth year. John Blackadder lies interred in North Berwick church-yard, where there is an epitaph to his memory, containing, among others, the following characteristic lines : Grace formed him in the Christian hero's mould ; Meek in his own concerns in's Master's bold ; Passions to reason chained, prudence did lead, Zeal warmed his breast, and prudence cooled his head. Five years on this lone rock, yet sweet abode, He Enoch-like enjoyed and walked with God ; Till by long-living on his heavenly food, His soul by love grew up, too great, too good, To be confined to jail, or flesh, or blood. BLACKLOCK, THOMAS, an ingenious blind poet, was born, November 10th, 1721, at Annan; his parents were natives of Cumberland, his father a brick- layer, and his mother the daughter of Mr Richard Rae, an extensive cattle dealer. Before he was six months old, he lost his sight in the small-pox ; and was thus rendered incapable of learning a mechanical trade, while the poor cir- cumstances to which a series of misfortunes had reduced his father, placed equally beyond his reach an education for any of those professions where the exercise of the mental faculties is principally required. His affectionate parent seems to have been aware, however, that the happiness of his son, shut out from so many of the enjoyments afforded by the external world, must mainly depend upon his intellectual resources; and in order to form these, he devoted part of his leisure hours to such instruction as his poor blind boy was susceptible of he read to him, at first the books adapted to the understanding of a child, and afterwards those fitted for a maturer capacity, such as Milton, Spenser, Prior, Pope, and Addison. His companions also, who pitied his want of sight, and loved him for his gentle disposition, lent their assistance in this task of kindness ; and by their help he acquired some little knowledge of Latin. Thomson and Allan Ramsay were his favourite authors ; and it was as early as his twelfth year that he evinced still more decidedly his love of the poetical art by the composition of an ode. ad- I. o V 226 THOMAS BLACKLOCK. dressed " To a little Girl whom I had offended," a production not remarkable solely on account of the future celebrity of its author, but because it displays at once his mildness of temper and lively fancy. The argument that shrewishness spoils a young lady's looks, and ought therefore to be avoided, coming as it retty high, her whole manner, not to me only, but to all her other friends, appeared expressive of dejection and misery. I had not resolution to continue my former plan, but used every possible argument to persuade her of my return- ing health ; and though conscious of acting a wrong part in this, I have not suf- ficient strength of mind to act a right one. This is my present situation of mind: 1 know it is what I ought not to have discovered to one of your humanity, nor can I pretend any other apology, but that I apply to the last and most natural resource of wretchedness, the sympathy of a friend. It is all I ask ; it is all I hope ; and it is what I am sure to obtain. Pray, tell me whether your bro- 232 THOMAS BLACKLOCK. ther prosecutes the same business with you, or whether friends in the country may not have it in their power to serve him ? 'Die precaution in my former concerning the balance of accounts between us was not taken from any fear of its appearing against my relations, but that you might recover it with greater case from myself during mine own life. Once more I must ask pardon for the length and subject of this letter ; but if you continue to favour me as a corres- pondent, my future answers shall be less tedious and more cheerful. As you are now more disengaged from secular business, the demands of your friends to hear from you will proportionably increase ; and as you have now long taught me to think myself of that number, I can no more resign the claim which it gives than the tenderness which it inspires, a tenderness which shall ever be felt in the highest degree, by your most sincere friend, and humble servant, "Dumfries, 15th April, 1759. THOMAS BLACKLOCK." In 1762, the Earl of Selkirk procured from the Crown a presentation to the parish of Kirkcudbright in favour of Mr Blacklock ; who, having thus the pros- pect of a competent income, married Mrs Sarah Johnston, daughter of Mr Joseph Johnston, surgeon in Dumfries. But though not disappointed in the happiness he expected to derive from this union, the gleam of fortune which seems to have induced him to form it, forsook him immediately after the step was taken. He was ordained a few days after his marriage ; but the people of the parish refused, on account of his blindness, to acknowledge him as their pastor, and a lawsuit was commenced, which, after two years, was compromised by Blacklock retiring upon a moderate annuity. From the first moment of op- position, it had been his wish to make this arrangement, not from any conviction of incompetency to the duties of a parish minister, but because he saw it was needless to contend against a prejudice so strongly maintained. " Civil and eccle- siastical employments," he says, " have something either in their own nature, or in the invincible prejudices of mankind, which renders them almost entirely in- accessible to those who have lost the use of sight No liberal and cultivated mind can entertain the least hesitation in concluding that there is nothing, either in the nature of things, or even in the positive institutions of genuine religion, repugnant to the idea of a blind clergyman. But the novelty of the phenome- non, while it astonishes vulgar and contracted understandings, inflames their zeal to rage and madness." His own experience, it is evident, suggested this observation. Blindness is certainly not in itself a sufficient reason for debarring those afflicted with it from the ministerial office ; it does not incapacitate a man for the acquirement of the requisite knowledge, nor exclude from his bosom the glow of holy zeal. On the contrary, worldly cares and ambition are not so ap- to intrude. " The attention of the soul, confined to those avenues of perception which she can command, is neither dissipated nor confounded by the immense multiplicity, or the rapid succession of surrounding objects. Hence her con- templations are more uniformly fixed upon herself, and the revolution of her own internal frame," ] and hence a greater fitness in her for the growth of de- votion. The want of sight would, indeed, put inconveniences in the way of a clergyman's intercourse with his parishioners, but they are small ; and it is not easy to conceive any thing more affecting and impressive than for those in the full enjoyment of their faculties to hear lessons of submission to the divine will, and of gratitude for the blessings of providence, from the mouth of one upon whom the hand of God has been laid. Such were not, however, the opinions of those with whom Blacklock had to deal ; and he acquiesced. This effort could not but be painful ; the sense of exclusion from all the business of life had long oppressed him, and the moment that patronage was extended towards him, and > Encyclopaedia Britajinica, article Blind, 10. THOMAS BLACKLOCK. 233 opened the prospect of public usefulness, he was assailed by a persecution, which rejected liini ;is incompetent to the duties for which other men are fit, and drove him back to his former state of dependence and seclusion. It is probably to the period when lie experienced so determined an opposition from the people oi Kirkcudbright, that we are to refer the composition of his Paraclesis ; for he informs us in the preface that his motive for writing that work was " to alleviate the pressure of repeated disappointments, to soothe his anguish for the loss of departed friends, to elude the rage of implacable and unprovoked enemies, in a word, to support his own mind, which, for a nuniber of years, besides its lite- rary difficulties and its natural disadvantages, had maintained an incessant con- flict with fortune." At no other period but that above referred to, are we aware that Blacklock was the object of any thing like an angry feelinjr. On the day of Mr Blacklock's ordination was afforded, in his person, an in- stance of sleep-walking, perhaps the most remarkable and complicated on record. As such the reader may be pleased to see an account of it as it is preserved in Dr Cleghorn's thesis De Somno, which was published in Blacklock's own life- time (in 1783). The facts Mere authenticated by Mrs Blacklock, Mr Gilbert Gordon, 2 and a numerous party of friends Avho dined with him at the inn of Kirkcudbright on the occasion in question. " Harassed by the censures of the populace," says Dr Cleghorn, "whereby not only his reputation, but his very subsistence was endangered, and fatigued with mental exertion, Blacklock fell asleep after dinner. Some hours afterwards he was called by a friend, answered his salutation, rcse and went into the dining-room, where his friends were met. He joined with two of them in a concert, singing tastefully as usual, and without missing a word. He ate an egg to supper, and drank some wine, and other liquors. His friends, however, observed him to be a little absent. Ey and bye he began to speak to himself; but in so low a tone, and so confusedly, as to be unintelligible. At last, being pretty forcibly roused, he awoke with a sudden.start, unconscious of all that had happened." We have no example of a person in sleep performing so many of the functions of one awake, and in so exact a man- ner, as Blacklock is here stated to have done. He spoke, walked, sung, took wine, and must have observed with accuracy many of the little courtesies of so- cial life ; for his friends did not suspect that he was asleep till he began to talk to himself. The time, however, was convenient for so unusual an exhibition ; and perhaps many other somnambulists would join in the occupations or amuse- ments of those around them, if the world Mere astir when they make their rounds. Circumstances, however, are quite different in ordinary cases ; the person gets up Mhen all others are at rest, and performs one or two acts, to which his half- :licitude to pro- mote the interests of the sons of genius, in his being the first man among the literary circles of Edinburgh who appreciated the poetry of Burns, (perhaps, in- deed, because lie had the earliest opportunity of becoming acquainted with it,) and kindled in the author the ambition of a prize beyond that of provincial fame. The Rev. Mr Lawrie of Newiuills had transmitted to Blacklock a copy of the Kilmarnock edition of Burns' poems. It is not easy for a modern reader to understand with what wonder and delight Blacklock must have perused them. In our time, the pleasure felt from his most perfect pieces is damped by the re- collection of their author's melancholy fate. What reflecting mind can turn from the perusal of the "Mountain Daisy" with any other feeling than one of sorrow that Burns was not a better and a happier man ? But while his career was yet to run, with what enviable anticipations must such a perusal have inspired a generous heart ! Here was poetry the purest and most genuine : he who pro- duced it was of no note ; but to what a high place in his country's esteom might he not rise! The world was then all before him, and he capable of attaining whatever fame the most ardent imagination could desire. With calmness, yi with energy, the enthusiastic Blacklock indicated his own admiration and the certainty of the poet's future fame : " many instances," he wrote to Mr Lawrie. " have I seen of nature's force and beneficence exerted under numerous and formidable disadvantages; but none equal to that with which you have been kind enougli to present me. There is a pathos and delicacy in his serious poems, & vein of wit and humour in those of a more festive turn, which cannot be too much admired nor too warmly approved. I think I shall never open the book without feeling my astonishment renewed and increased. It were much to be wished, for the sake of the young man, that a second edition, more numerous than the former, could immediately be printed ; as it appears certain that its in- trinsic merit, and the exertion of the author's friends, might give it a more uni- versal circulation than any thing of the kind which has been published within my memory." " I had taken the last farewell of my few friends," says Burns ; " my chest was on the road to Greenock ; I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Scotland ' The Gloomy night is gathering fast ' when a letter from Dr Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition. The Doctor belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His opinion that I would meel with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition, fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction." " Blacklock received him," says Dr Currie, " with all the ar dour of affectionate admiration ; he eagerly introduced him to the respectable circle of his friends ; he consulted his interest ; he emblazoned his fame ; he lavished upon him all the kindness of a generous and feeling heart, into which nothing selfish or envious ever found admittance." " In Dr Blacklock," Burns himself writes to Mr Lawrie, " In Dr Blacklock, whom I see very often, I have found what I would have expected in our friend, a clear head and an excellent heart" It is not our business, in this place, to trace Burns's career farther. Dr Blacklock's duty towards him was performed, when he had bestowed upon him every mark of private regard, and consigned him to the care of more influ- ential patrons. After Burns retired to the country, some letters passed between them, which, on Dr Blacklock's part, show how very poorly a remarkably sensible man could write when he had little to say, and thought to compensate for the meagreness of his subject by elevating it into rhyme. THOMAS BLACKLOCK. 237 Besides the miscellaneous poems by which Dr Blacklock is best known as an author, he published several other works. In 17 56 he gave to the world an " Essay towards Universal Etymology ;" in 1760, " The Right Improvement of Time, a Sermon ;" in the ensuing year another sermon, entitled " Faith, Hope, and Charity compared." In 1767 appeared his "Paraclesis; or Consolations deduced from Natural and Revealed Religion," in two dissertations, the first supposed to be Cicero's, translated by Dr Blacklock, the other written by him- self. This work, to use the author's own touching words, " was begun and pur- sued by its author, to divert wakeful and melancholy hours, which the recollec- tion of past misfortunes, and the sense of present inconveniences, would other- wise have severely embittered." He endeavours, but without success, to prove the authenticity of the dissertation ascribed to Cicero, which he has translated with fidelity and elegance : the object of the original discourse is to prove the superiority of the consolations afforded by revealed religion. In 1768, he printed " Two Discourses on the Spirit and Evidences of Christianity," trans- lated from the French of Mr James Armand. To this work he prefixed a long* dedication to the 'Moderator of the General Assembly. In 1773 appeared his ' Panegyric on Great Britain," which shows him to have possessed considerable talents for satire had lie chosen to pursue that species of writing. His last pro- duction was in 1774, "The Graham, an Heroic Ballad, in Four Cantos;" in- tended to promote a good understanding between the natives of England and Scotland. He contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in 1783, the article Blind a little treatise of peculiar interest, which we have had occasion to quote in the present account of its author. He is also said to have written the Essay on Poetry, and others on various subjects in the same work. Dr Black- lock left behind him in manuscript some volumes of sermons, and a Treatise on Morals. In his latter years our author was occasionally afflicted with deafness in his case a double calamity, as at the periods when it visited him, he was in a manner shut out from all communication with the external world. In this forlorn con- dition old, blind, and sometimes deaf it was more difficult for him than for- merly to bear up against the depression of spirits to which he had always been more or less subject; but his gentleness of temper never forsook him, and though he could not altogether avoid complaint, he was not loath to discover and state some alleviating circumstance along with it. He died from fever after a week's illness, on the 7th July, 1791, and was buried in the ground of St Cuthbert's Chapel of Ease, where there is a tombstone erected, with the folJow- ing inscription by Dr Beattie : " Viro Revei-endo Thomas Blacklock, D. D. 1 Probo, Pio, Benevolo, Omnigena Doctrina Erudito, Poetse sublimi; ab incunabu- lis usque oculis capto, at hilari, faceto, amicisque semper carissimo ; qui natus xxi Novemb. MDCCXX. obiit vn Julii, MDCCXCI : Hoc Monumentum Vidua ejus Sai i Johnston, moerens P." It has been said of Dr Blacklock that " he never lost a friend, nor made a foe ;" and perhaps no literary man ever passed through life so perfectly free from envious feeling, and so entirely respected and beloved. His conversa- tion was lively and entertaining ; his wit was acknowledged, but it had no tinge of malice; his temper was gentle, his feelings warm intense; his whole cha- racter was one to which may be applied the epithet amiable, without any quali- faation. We do not deny him the merit of this ; but he was placed in circum- stances favourable for the development of such a character: his blindness, together with his genius, prepossessed all in his favour, and procured him many i The classical reader will easily detect a fault hereDivinitatis Doctor! which, it may Ixj remaiked, was also committed on one occasion by Dr Adam. 238 THOMAS BLACKLOCK. warm friends ; while he was never in hazard of creating enemies, because, being incapacitated for any of the more active pursuits of life, his interests did not come into collison with those of any other aspirant in a similar pntlu He was thus enabled to " live pleasant," as far as his intercourse with the world was con- cerned. In his own mind, lie did not at all times enjoy the cheerfulness which his excellent temper and his piety might seem to promise ; lie laboured under a dc pression of spirits, which grew upon him, as the buoyancy of youth and the energy of manhood declined. When we consider how much more we are liable to super- stitious fears and alarms of every kind during the night than in the day, it docs not appear surprising, that those condemned to ceaseless darkness should find it impossible to subdue their sense of loneliness and destitution. No variety of visible objects, no beauty of colour or grace of motion, ever diverts tho mind of the blind man from brooding over its own phantasmata ; the .ear may be said to be the only inlet by which he can receive cheering ideas, and hence, when companionless, he becomes liable to the intrusion of doubts and dreads in an endless train. The bodily inactivity to wlu'ch the want of sight compels hiiu- and his exclusion from business, unhappily promote the same morbid sensibility ; and though society may afford him many gleams of delight, the long hours of so- litude bring back the prevailing gloom. From this disease of the mind, Dr Blacklock's varied stores of acquired knowledge, the native sweetness of his tem- per, and the tender cares of an affectionate wife, could not preserve him. It might be the cause of uneasiness to himself, however, but never influenced his behaviour to others ; it made him melancholy, but not morose. Even they who look upon it as being, in ordinary instances, a fantastic and blameable weakness, must pity the present sufferer, in whom so many causes concurred to render it irresistible. To Dr Blacklock as a poet, the rank of first-rate excellence has not been as- signed, and is not claimed; but his works posses; solid merits, which will al- ways repay a perusal The thoughts are, for the most part, vigorous, seldom less than just ; and they are conveyed with a certain intensity of expression, which shows them, even when not uncommon in themselves, to be the offspring of a superior genius. As the productions of a blind man, they present a study of the rery highest interest, and have frequently been viewed as a problem in the science of mind. The author himself seems to have been not unwilling to invest (hem with a certain character of mystery: " It is possible," he says, "for the blind, by a retentive memory, to tell you, that the sky is an azure ; that the sun, moon, and stars, are bright ; that the rose is red, the lily white or yellow, and the tulip variegated. By continually hearing these substantives and adjectives joined, he may be mechanically taught to join them in the same manner ; but ns he never had any sensation of colour, however accurately he may speak of coloured objects, his language must be like that of a parrot, without meaning, or without ideas. Homer, Milton, and Ossian, had been long acquainted with the visible world before they were surrounded with clouds and ever-during dark- ness. They might, therefore, still retain the warm and pleasing impressions of what they had seen. Their descriptions might be animated with all the rapture and enthusiasm which originally fired their bosoms when the grand or delight- ful objects which they delineated were immediately beheld. Nay, that enthusiasm might still be heightened by a bitter sense of their loss, and by that regret which a situation so dismal might naturally inspire. But how shall we account for the same energy, the same transport of description, exhibited by those on whose minds visible objects were either never impressed, or have been entirely obliter- ated ? Yet, however unaccountable this fact may appear, it is no less certain than extraordinary. But delicacy, and other particular circumstances, forbid us THOMAS BLACKLOCK. 239 to enter into this disquisition with that minuteness and precision which it re- quires." " Mr Spenco observes," says the writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1 '' that Blacklock's notion of day may comprehend the ideas of warmth, variety ot sounds, society, and cheerfulness ; and his notion of night, the contraiy ideas ot dullness, silence, solitude, melancholy, and, occasionally, even of horror: that no substitutes the idea of glory for that of the sun; and of glory in a less de- gree for those of the moon and stars : that his idea of the beams of the sun may bo composed of this idea of glory, and that of rapidity : that something of soli- dity, too, may perhaps be admitted both into his idea of light and darkness ; but that what his idea of glory is, cannot be determined. Mr Spence also re- marks, that Mr Blacklock may attribute paleness to grief, brightness to the eyes, cheerfulness to green , and a glow to gems and roses, without any determinate ideas ; as boys at school, when, in their distress for a word to lengthen out a verse, they find parpureus olor, or purpureum mare, may afterwards use the epithet purpu- reus with propriety, though they know not what it means, and have never seen either a swan or the sea, or heard that the swan is of a light, and the sea of a lark colour. But he supposes, too, that Mr Blacklock may have been able to distinguish colours by his touch, and to have made a new vocabulary to himself, by substituting tangible for visible differences, and giving them the same names ; so that green, with him, may seem something pleasing or soft to the touch, and red, something displeasing or rough. In defence of this supposition, it has been said, Avith some plausibility, that the same disposition of parts in the surfaces ot 1 We have already staled our belief that this writer was Dr Johnson. Besides the evi- dence which the passages quoted in the text afford, there is much of the spirit of Johnson m the summary of Blacklock's personal character: "This gentleman has one excellence which outvalues all genius, and all learning he is truly and eminently a good man. He imssexses great abilities with, modesty, and wants almost eoery tiling else with content." The pro- bability is farther heightened by the kindness which Johnson manifested to Blacklock when lie visited Scotland. On being introduced at Mr Boswell's, the English moralist " received him with a most humane complacency 'Dear Dr Blacklock, I am glad to see you!'" Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides. We are also told by Mr Bos\vell,that Dr Johnson, on his re- turn from the Western Islands, breakfasted once at Dr Blacklock's house. We esteem the ver- bal criticism in the article we have just spoken of, as equally characteristic of the illustrious lexicographer: " Some passages," it is remarked, "appear to have something wrong in them at the first view, but upon a more accurate inspection, are found to be right, or at least only to be wrong as they reflect the faults of others. In these verses, 'What cave profound, what star sublime, Shall hide me from thy boundless view,' there seems to be an improper connexinn of ideas ; but the impropriety is in a great degree of our own making. We have joined ideas which Mr Blacklock, without any absurdity, nas here separated. We have associated the idea of darkness with that of profundity, and can separate good men from the love of God ; neither, says Mr Blacklock, can ^height^or depth conceal a effect of obscur view which he supposes to cornpreh' 'any being from his sight. And that he did 110! here suppose concealment the irity, appears plainly from the epithet boundless, which he has given to that ,,.,. ,. .,e supposes to comprehend all height and depth, or, in other words, universal space. It must, however, be granted, that as height and depth are relative to a mide puint, there is no proportion between the depth of a cave and the height of a star. " There is certainly a mistake in the last line of this couplet : inly ' So fools their flocks to sanguine wolves resign, So trust the cunning fox to prune the vine.' were sour. Blacklock explained this latter passage by saying, " that he alluded t known passage of the Scripture: ' Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil for our vines have tender grapes.' Cant. ii. 15." that he alluded to that the vii 240 THOMAS ELACKLOCK. bodies, which makes them reflect different rays of light, may make them feel as differently to the exquisite touch of a blind man. But there is so much differ- ence in the tangible qualities of things of the same colour, so much roughness and smoothness, harshness and softness, arising from other causes, that it is more dif- ficult to conceive how that minute degree arising from colour should be distin- guished, than how a blind man should talk sensibly on the subject without havin"- made such distinction. We cannot conceive how a piece of red velvet, woollen cloth, camblet, silk, and painted canvass, should have something in common, which can be distinguished by the touch, through the greatest difference in all qualities which the touch can discover ; or in what mode green buckram should be more soft and pleasing to the touch than red velvet If the softness peculiar to green be distinguished in the buckram, and the harshness peculiar to red in the velvet, it must be by some quality with which the rest of mankind are as little acquainted as the blind with colour. It may perhaps be said, that a blind 111:111 is supposed to distinguish colours by his touch, only when all things are equal. But if this be admitted, it would as much violate the order of his ideas to call velvet red, as to call softness harsh, or, indeed, to call green red ; velvet being somewhat soft and pleasing to the toucji, and somewhat soft and pleasing to the touch being his idea of green." The acuteness of these remarks leaves us to regret that the author eluded (he discussion of the most difficult part of the subject, and fixed upon that concern- ing which there is no dispute: Blacklock himself acknowledged what is li -iv said about distinguishing colours by the touch, to be true as far as he was con- cerned, that being a nicety of perception which, though reported to be possessed by others, he in vain endeavoured to attain. " We have known a person," he says, in his article on Blindness, " who lost the use of liis sight at an early pe- riod of infancy, who, in the vivacity or delicacy of his sensations, was not, per- haps, inferior to any one, and who had often heard of others in his own situation capable of distinguishing colours by touch with the utmost exactness and proni]>- titude. Stimulated, therefore, partly by curiosity, to acquire a new train of ideas, if that acquisition were possible, but still more by incredulity with respect to the facts related, he tried repeated experiments by touching the surfaces of different bodies, and examining whether any such diversities could be found in them as might enable him to distinguish colours ; but no such diversity could he ever ascertain. Sometimes, indeed, he imagined that objects which had no co- lour, or, in other words, such as were black, were somewhat different and peculiar in their surfaces ; but this experiment did not always, nor universally hold." But even supposing Dr Blacklock to have possessed the power of distinguish- ing colours by the touch, and that by handling the coat which he wore he could have told whether it was blue or black, the stock of ideas that he might thereby have obtained, would have contributed little to fit him for describing external nature. He could have formed no conception of a landscape from the repre- sentation of it on canvass, which, at the most, could only convey the idea of a plain surface covered with a variety of spots, some of which were smoother and more pleasant to the touch than others. The pomp of groves and garniture of fields would never have been disclosed to his yearning fancy by so slow and im- perfect a process. Nor could his notions of scenery be much improved by what- ever other conventional method he endeavoured to form them. Granting that he framed his idea of the sun upon the model of that of glory, it was still but an abstract idea, and could bring him no nearer to a distinct apprehension of the tplendour with which light covers the face of the earth ; nor could his idea of ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH BLACKWELL. 241 the obscuration of glory enable him to understand the real nature of the appear- ances he describes when he says " Clouds peep on clouds, and as they rise, Condense to solid gloom the skies.'' All these suppositions fail to aftbrd a solution of the difficulty concerning the nature of his ideas of visible objects. In order to arrive at the proper explana- tion, let us inquire whence he derived them : that the sky is blue and the fields green, he could only learn from the descriptions of others. What he learned from others he might combine variously, and by long familiarity with the use ol words, he might do so correctly, but it was from memory alone that he drew his materials. Imagination could not heighten his pictures by stores of any kind but those supplied by his recollection of books. We wonder, indeed, at the ac- curate arrangement of the different parts in his delineations, and that he should ever have been led to peruse what he could not by any possibility understand how, for instance, he should have studied with ardour and delight such a work as the " Seasons," the appreciation of whose beauties one would suppose to depend almost entirely on an acquaintance with the visible forms of creation. But when we consider how deeply he must have regretted the want of the most de- lightfid of our senses, it will appear most natural, that he should strive by every means to repair the deficiency, and to be admitted to some share of the pleasure which he had heard that sight conveys. From his constant endeavours to ar- rive at some knowledge of the nature of visible objects, he obtained a full com- mand of the language proper to them ; and the correct application of what he thus learned, is all that can be claimed for the descriptive parts of his poetry. These never present any picture absolutely original, however pleasing it may be, and however much it may enhance the effect of the sentiment it is introduced to assist. Besides the earlier notices of Mr Gilbert Gordon, of Spence, and, we may add, of Johnson, Blacklock'g life has been written by Mackenzie with great elegance, by Chalmers, and by Dr Anderson. The last biographer mentions that " some memoirs of his life, written by himself, are now (1795) in the pos- session of Dr Beattie." It is not improbable that this statement refers merely to the " long letter" from Blacklock to Beattie, already alluded to. If other do- cuments of this kind were in the hands of the latter in 1795, as he had not thought proper to communicate them to any of Dr Blacklock's biographers, the probability is, that he would have retained them till his death, and that they would have appeared among his papers. Sir William Forbes, however, makes no mention of any such discovery ; although, besides frequent allusions to him in the course of the life of Dr Beattie, he has, in the appendix to that work, given a brief sketch of that of Dr Blacklock. If such memoirs are, nevertheless, in existence, and could be recovered, they would form a most interesting addition to our stock of autobiography. BLACKWELL, ALEXANDER and ELIZABETH, husband and wife. The former was brother to the more celebrated Dr Thomas Blackuell, the subject of the fol- lowing article. His father, Thomas Black well, was at first minister of Paisley, whence he was removed, in 1700, to be one of the ministers of Aberdeen. He was there appointed to be Professor of Divinity in the Marischal college, and afterwards, in 1717, raised by the crown to the rank of Principal, which he held till his death in 172S. Alexander, his son, exhibited at an early period such symptoms of genius as induced his father to employ great personal care in his education. At fifteen, he was a perfect Greek and Latin scholar, and he afterwards distinguished himself very highly at college. It would appear that 242 ALEXANDER AND ELIZABETH BLA.CKWELL. his union to Elizabeth Block well, who was the daughter of a merchant at Aber- deen, took place under clandestine circumstances, and was connected with n step which gave a direction to all his future fortunes. This was a secret elopement to London, where he arrived before any of his friends knew where lie was. Blockwell appears, to have been a man of mercurial and adventurous tempera- ment ; possessing, wit'.i these qualities, exactly that degree of ability and accom- plishment, which h:is enabled s.> many of his countrymen to prosecute a s ful career in London. His first employment was that of corrector of the press to Mr Wilkjns, an eminent printer. Afterwards, he was enabled to set up as a prin- ter on his own account, and for this purpose he occupied a large house in the Strand. But he did not long p :rs ;e this business before an action was brought against him for not having served a regular apprenticeship to it. The unsuc- cessful defence of this action ruined him, and one of his creditors threw him into jail, where he remained two years. Hitherto we hear nothing of liis wife and, perhaps, but for the misfortunes of the husband, the virtues of this noble woman might have only decorated a private station, and never emerged into the light of public fame. Like the ilower, however, which blooms most by night, the better quality of woman's na- ture is chieily developed under the cloud of sorrow ; and it is only when the powers of man hive been prostrated, or found of no avail, that her weakness shines forth in its real character latent strength. Elizabeth Blackwell hap- pened to possess a taste for drawing flowers; a taste then so very rare, that tiiere was hardly any engraved work in existence, containing representations of this interesting department of creation. The acknowledged want of a good herbal occurred to her as affording the means of exerting this gift in a useful way ; and some of her first attempts being submitted to Sir Hans Sloane, Ur Mead, and other eminent physicians, she soon received sufficient encouragement to proceed in her work. A document, attesting their satisfaction with Mrs lilack- well'j specimens, and recommending her contemplated work to public attention, was signed by six eminent physicians, including these gentlemen, and bears date, " October 1, 1735." By the advice of Mr Rand, an eminent apothecary, demonstrator to the Company of Apothecaries in die Botanic Garden at Chelsea, Mrs Blackwell hired a house near that establishment, where she had an oppor- tunity of receiving the necessary flowers and plants in a fresh state, as she wanted them ; she also received great encouragement and assistance from Mr i j hilip Miller, so well known for his publications connected with horticulture. Mrs Blackwell not only made drawings of the flowers, but she also engraved them on copper, and coloured the prints with her own hands. Her husband lent all the aid in his power, by attaching the Latin names of the plants, together with a short account of their principal characters and uses, chiefly taken, by per- mission, from Miller's " Botanicum Officinale." The first volume of the work appeared in 1737, in large folio, containing two hundred and fifty-two plates, each of which is occupied by one distinct flower or plant ; and was dedicated to Dr Mead, with the following address ; " As the world is indebted to the eii- couragers of every public good, if the following undertaking should prove such, it is but justice to declare who have been the chief promoters of it ; and as you was the first who advised its publication, and honoured it with your name, give me leave to tell the readers how much they are in your debt for this work, and to acknowledge the honour of your friendship." The second volume, complet- ing the number of plates to five hundred, appeared in 1739, and was inscribed lo Mr Hand, in an address breathing as fervent a spirit of gratitude, and acknow- ledging that, in her own ignorance of Botany, she w;is entirely obliged to him far the completeness of the work, so far as it went The drawings are in gene- ALEXANDER ANP ELIZABETH BLACKWELL. 243 nil faitliful ; and if there is wanting that accuracy which modern improvements have rendered necessary, in delineating the more minute parts, yet, upon the whole, the figures are sufficiently distinctive of the subjects. The style of the engravings is what would now be called hard, but it is fully on a level with the prevailing taste of the age; and, as a piece of labour, executed, it would ap- pear, in the space of four years, by the hands of one woman, the whole work is entitled alike to our wonder and admiration. While Mrs Blackwell was pro- ceeding in her task, she attracted the attention of many persons of eminent rank and character, and also a great number of scientific persons, who visited her at Chelsea, and afforded her many marks of kindness. On the completion of the first volume, she was permitted in person to present a copy to the College of Physicians, who acknowledged her extraordinary merit by a handsome present, as well as a testimonial, under the hands of the president and censors of the in- stitution, characterising her work as " most useful," and recommending it to the public. It seems to have been at this period of her labours, that, after having nil along supported her family by her own exertions, she was enabled to redeem her husband from confinement. Blackwell, after his release, lived for some time at Chelsea with his wife, and, on her account, was much respected. He attempted to perfect himself in the study of physic, and also formed schemes for the improvement of waste lands. This latter subject he studied to such a degree, as to be enabled to write nn agricultural treatise, which attracted some attention. Among his other occupa- tions, for some time, was a prosecution which he entered into against some I -rintsellevs, for pirating his wife's botanical plates. By his success in this aflhir, he revenged in some measure the persecution to which he had been subjected for his inadvertent breach of another exclusive law. His agricultural knowledge gradually became known, and he was often consulted on difficult points con- nected with that science, and received handsome fees for his trouble. At one time he was employed by the Duke of Chandos in superintending some agricul- tural operations at Cannons. His work on agriculture, which was published at this time, recommended him to the attention of a still higher patronage the Swedish ambassador, who, having transmitted a copy to his court, was directed to engage the author, if possible, to go to Stockholm. Blackwell accepted this engagement, and sailed for the Swedish capital, leaving his wife and one chi d in England, with a promise that he would soon send for them. He was received in the kindest manner at the court of Stockholm, was lodged in the house of the Prime Minister, and was allowed a pension. The king of Sweden happen- ing soon after to be taken dangerously ill, Blackwell was permitted to prescribe for him, and had the good fortune to eflect a cure. He was consequently ap- pointed one of the king's physicians, and styled Doctor, though it does not .ippear that he ever took a degree in medicine. While enjoying all this good fortune, he was not forgetful of his wife, but sent her several sums of money, and she was on the point of sailing to join him at Stockholm, when iril his prospects, and life itself, were overwhelmed at one blow. It is probable, from the chair.c- ter of his brother Thomas, that he was a fervent admirer of the principles cf civil liberty. Nothing, moreover, can be more probable than that a man, ac- customed to all the freedom of speech which is so harmlessly permitted in Bri- tain, might not very readily accommodate himself to that prudence of the tongue which is demanded from the subjects of an arbitrary monarchy. It is at least certain, that he was apprehended on suspicion of being connected with a plot, which had been formed by one Count Tessin, for overturning the constitution of the kingdom, and altering the line of succession. Being put to the torture, he is alleged to have confessed a concern in this conspiracy. Every reader, how 244 THOMAS BLACKWELL. ever will acknowledge, that confessions under the torture form historical docu- ments of a very questionable nature. Being tried for his supposed otfence before a royal commission, he was sentenced to be broken alive on the wheel, and put to the death of a traitor. In the course of his trial, some imputations were thrown ut>on his Britannic Majesty, for which, in conjunction with other circum- stances, the British ambassador was recalled from Stockholm. The unfortunate Blackwell was executed, July 29th, 1747, but not, it would appear, with the tortures assigned by his sentence. On the scaffold, he protested to the people his entire innocence of tiie crimes laid to his charge, and, as the best proof of what he stated, pointed out his utter want of all motive for engaging in an at- tempt against the government. He prayed with great devotion, but happening 10 lay his head wrong upon the block, he remarked good-humouredly, that, as ihis was his first experiment, no wonder lie required a little instruction. The late of Mrs Blackwell's death is not ascertained. ' Her work was afterward* iv- published on the continent. BLACKWELL, THOMAS, the restorer of Greek literature in the North of Scot- land, and a learned writer of the eighteenth century, was brother to the subject of the preceding article. He was born at Aberdeen, August 4th, 1701, and after receiving the rudiments of his education at the Grammar School of his na- tive city,' entered his academical course at the Marischal College, where he took the degree of A. M. in 1718. A separate professorship of Oireek had not ex- isted in this seminary previous to 1700, and the best of the ancient languages was at that period very little cultivated in Scotland. Blackwell, having turned his attention to Greek, was honoured, in 1723, when only twenty-two years of age, with a crown appointment to this chair. He entered upon the discharge of the duties of his office with the utmost ardour. It perfectly suited his inclination and habits. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the language and literature of Greece, and the whole bent of his studies was exclusively devoted to the cultiva- tion of polite learning. He had the merit of rearing some very eminent Greek scholars, among whom may be mentioned Principal George Campbell, Dr Alex- ander Gerard, and Dr James Beattie. The last has borne ample testimony to the merit of his master, in his "Essay on the Utility of Classical Learning.' 1 where he styles Principal BJackwell " a very learned author." Dr Blackwell first appeared before the public, as an author, in 1737. His In- quiry into the Life and Writings of Homer was published at London during the course of that year, but without his name. It has been positively ailirmed 1 Soon after the death of Bhickvvcll, appeared " a genuine copy of u letter from a mer- e-haul in Stockholm, to his correspondent in London, containing mi impartial account of Dr Alexander Blackw, -II, his plot, trial, character, and behaviour, both under examination and at the place of execution, together with a copy of a paper delivered to a friend upon the scaffold, in which In: denied the crime imputed to him. ' Tin's publication docs not appear to have been genuine, and as it contains some particulars of the life of Blackwell totally at variance with the above more authentic and probable account, which is chiefly derived from a letter signed G. J. and dated from Bath, in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1747, we have entirely rejected it. This spurious work is, nevertheless, chiefly used by Mr Nichols, in an account of Blackwell given in the Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. 2 The history of the origin of what are technically, in Scotland, denominated Grainnmr Schools, is involved in considerable obscurity. The probability is, that they were in most cases founded by generous individuals, who wi>hcd well to the cause of literature, and who, to secure that proper care should be taken in the management of the funds by which the establishment was supported, vested the money appropriated for that purpose in some public body, or corporation, ft does not admit of a doubt, thai this took place in several of theprin- ei pal Scottish burghs ; but it is very singular, that those schools were limited to the Latin a nguage alone. This proceeded from the dread that there was a design in the founders of such seminaries to supersede Universities, where Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were tau.nln. The Grammar School of Aberdeen was founded by Dr Patrick Dun, Principal of Mari- schal Collese, who was a native of the city, and had resided at Padua, when- he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine. THOMAS BLACKWELL. 245 with what truth it is impossible to say, that its being anonymous, was in imita- tion of Lord. Shaftesbury, of whom he was a warm admirer, and whose works were published after that manner. The style, also, is vitiated by a perpetual effort at the Shaftesburian vein, which is, perhaps, the principal fault in the writing of Blackwell. A second edition of the work appeared in 1746, and shortly after, " Proofs of the Inquiry into Homer's Life and Writings." These proofs chiefly consisted of a translation of tlie Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and French notes subjoined to the original work. The Inquiry contains a i;reat deal of research, as well as a display of miscellaneous learning. Per- haps its principal defect consists in the author's discovering an over anxiety in regard to both ; at least, he has not been sufficiently careful to guard against the imputation of sometimes going out of his way to show what labour he had bestowed in examining every source of information, both ancient and modern, foreign and domestic. Though the lije of Homer has been writ- ten by Herodotus, by Plutarch, and by Suidas, among the Greeks, and by an innumerable host of writers scattered through other nations, yet there is hardly onw point in his history about which they are agreed, excepting the prodigious merit of his poems, and the sophist Zoilus would not even grant this. Ho\v great uncertainty prevailed respecting the time and place of his birth, abundantly appears from seven Grecian cities contending in regard to the latter point. When the field was so extensive, and so great diversity of opinion prevailed, it cannot fail to be perceived how arduous an enterprise Dr Blackwell had under- taken. His criticisms on the poems themselves "are alwajs encomiastic, often ingenious, and delivered in language that can give no reasonable ground of offence. The work will be read, with both pleasure and profit by all who are prepared to enter upon such inquiries. It is generally esteemed the best of his performances. He published, in 1748, "Letters concerning Mythology," without his name also. In the course of the same year, he was advanced to be principal of his College, succeeding Dr John Osbome, who died upon the 19th of August. Dr Blackwell, however, was not admitted to the exercise of his new office till the subsequent 9th of November. The first object of his attention respected the dis- cipline of the College. Great irregularities had crept into the institution, not in his predecessor's time only, but probably almost from its foundation. Through the poverty of the generality of the students in those days, their attendance, short as the session was allowed to be, was very partial ; to correct this, he con- sidered to be indispensably necessary. Accordingly, about the middle of Octo- ber, 1749, previous to the commencement of the session, an advertisement in the public papers informed the students, that a more regular attendance was to be required. This, it would appear, did not produce the intended effect Accord- ingly, to show that the Principal and Professors were perfectly in earnest when . they gave this public notice, three of the Bursars who had not complied with the terms of the advertisement, were, on the I Oth of November, expelled. This deci- sion gave general satisfaction, and indeed deserved high commendation. But, that the Professors themselves might be more alert and attentive to their duty, he revived a practice which, it is likely, had at an early period been com- mon, for every Professor in the University to deliver a discourse in the public school upon some subject connected with his profession. He himself set the ex- ample, and delivered his first oration upon the 7th of February, 1749. When Blackwell was promoted to the principality, instead of sinking in indolence, he seems to have considered it rather as affording an excitement to exertion. In February, 1750, he opened a class for the instruction of the students in ancient history, geography, and chronology. Prelections on these branches of education, 246 ADAM BLACKWOOD. lie thought necessary to render more perfect the course .at Mnrischnl College. He, therefore, himself undertook the fcisk. The design of his opening this class evi- dently was to pare the way for the introduction of a new plan of teaching into Mnrischal College, which, accordingly, he soon after accomplished. At tho commencement of the session 1752, public notice was given that, "the Prin- cipal, Professors, and Blasters, having long had under their consideration the present method of academical education, the plan of which, originally intro- duced by the scholastic divines in the darkest times, is more calculated for dis- putes and wrangling than to fit men for the duties of life, therefore have resolved to introduce a new order in teaching the sciences." The order which was then adopted, is what still continues in force in that University. Three years afterwards, when the new plan had been put to the trial for as many sessions, the faculty of the college ordered an account of the plan of education which was followed to be printed. This formed a pamphlet of thirty-five pages. It concludes thus : " They have already begun to experience the public ap- probation by the increase of the number of their students." So that he had tiie agreeable pleasure of witnessing the success of the plan he had proposed. In 1752 he took the degree of Doctor of Laws, and in the subsequent year, was published, in quarto, the first volume of " Memoirs of the Court of Augustus." A second volume appeared in 1755, and a third, which was posthu- mous, and left unfinished by the author, was prepared for the press by .lohn Mills, Esq. and published in 1764. In this work, the author has endeavoured to give an account of Roman literature as it appeared in the Augustan age, and he has executed the task with no small share of success. Objections might easily be started to some of his theories and opinions, but every classical scholar who is fond of literary history will peruse the work with pleasure as well as profit Dr Blackwell died, at Edinburgh, upon the (3th of March, 1757. lie was certainly a very extraordinary person, and like every man of acknowledged talents, formed a very general subject of conversation. He was formal, and even pompous. His dress was after the fashion of the reign of Queen Anne. '1 he portly mien and dignified manner in which he stepped through the public school, impressed all the students with a deep sense of his professional importance. He was, nevertheless, kind and indulgent to them, and of a benevolent disposition. He left a widow, but no children. Mrs Blackwell, in 1793, founded a chemical professorship in Mnrischal College, and appointed a premium often pounds starling to be annually bestowed on the person who should compose, and deliver, in (he English language, the best discourse upon a given literary subject. ill/ACKWOOD, ADAM, a learned writer of the sixteenth century, was Ix-rn at Dunfermline, in 1 53!). He was descended from an ancient and respectable family ; his father, William Blackwood, was slain in battle ere he was ten years .of age, (probably at Pinkie-field); his mother, Helen Reid, who \\as niece to Hobert lieid, Bishop of Orkney, died soon after, of grief for the loss of her bus. band. By his uncle, the Bishop, he was sent to the university of Paris, but was soon obliged to return, on account of the death of his distinguished relation. 'Scotland, at this time, was undergoing the agonies of the reformation, under the regency of Mary of Lorrain. Blackwood found it no proper sphere for his edu- cation ; and therefore soon returned to Paris, where, by the liberality of his youthful sovereign, Queen Mary, then residing at the court of 1' Vance, he was milled tn complete his studies, and to go through a course of civil law at the university of 'J houlonse. Having now acquired some reputation for learning and talent, he was patronized by James Beaton, the expatriated Archbishop of - plied himself to the study of medicine, he rose to be dean of that facility at Paris, an office of the very highest dignity which "could then be reached by a member of the medical profession. He appears to have been one of the earliest modern physicians who gave a sanction to the practice of letting blood. He published various treatises on medicine, and also upon philosophy, of which a list is preserved in Mackenzie's Lives of Scots Writers. He acted at one time as physician to the Duke of Longueville, with a salary of two h mdred pistoles. At another time, when the plague prevailed at Paris, he remained in the city, and exerted himself so zealously in the cure of his numerous patients, as to gain universal applause. He died, in 1613 or 1614, at a very advanced airv. BLACKWOOD, WILLIAM, an eminent publisher, and originator of the magazine which bears his name, was born in Edinburgh, November 20, 1776, of parents who, though in humble circumstances, bore a respectable character, and were able to give this and their other children an excellent elementary education. At the age of fourteen, he commenced an apprenticeship with Messrs Bell and Jiradfute, booksellers in his native city, with whom he con- tinued six years. During this time, he stored his mind with a large fund of miscellaneous reading, which was of great service to him in after life. It is probable tint he at the same time manifested no common talents for business, as, soon after the expiration of his apprenticeship, [1797,] he was selected by Messrs J. Mundell and Company, then carrying on an extensive publishing business in the Scottish capital, to take the charge of a branch of their concern which they had resolved to establish in Glasgow. Mr Black wood acted as the Glasgow agent of Mundell and Company for a year, during which time lie im- proved greatly as a man of business. Thrown in a great measure upon Ins own resources, he here acquired habits of decision, such as are rarely formed at so early an age, and which were afterwards of the greatest importance to him. Having also occasion to write frequently to his constituents, he formed a styla for commercial correspondence, the excellence of which was a subject of fre- quent remark in his later years. At the end of the year, when the business he had conducted at Glasgow was given up, Mr Black wood returned to Messrs Bell and Bradfute, with whom he continued about a year longer. He then (1800) entered into partnership with Mr Robert Ross, a bookseller of some standing, who also acted as ai auctioneer of books. Not long after, finding the line of business pursued by Mr Ross uncongenial to his taste, he retired from the partnership, and. pro- ceeding to London, placed himself, for improvement in the antiquarian depart- ment of his trade, under Mr CuthilL Reluming once more to Edinburgh in 1 804, he set up on his own account in a shop in South Bridge street, where for several years he confined his attention almost exclusively tc the department just alluded to, in which he was allowed to have no rival of superior intelligence in Scotland. The catalogue of old books which he published in 1812, being the first of the kind in which the books were classified, and which referred to a stock of uncommon richness and variety, continues till the present day to be a standard authority for the prices of old books. At this period of his career, Mr Blackwood became agent for several of the first London publishing houses, and also began to publish exten- sively for himself. In 1816, having resolved to throw a larger share of his energies into the latter department of business, he sold off his stock of old books, and removed to a shop in the New Town, soon to become one of the most memorable localities connected with modern literary history. "WILLIAM BLACKWOOD. 249 For a considerable time, Mr Blackwood had been of opinion tlmt something 1 like the same regeneration whi<;h the Edinburgh Review had given to periodical criticism, might be communicated to that species of miscellaneous literature which chiefly assumed the monthly form of publication. At this time, the Scots Magazine of his native city, which had never pretended to any merit above that of a correct register, was scarcely in any respect more flat and insipid than the publications of the same kind in London. It was reserved for the original and energetic mind of the subject of this memoir, to raise this department of popular literature from the humble state in which it had hitherto existed, or to which, when we recollect the labours of Johnson and Goldsmith, we may rather say it had sunk, and to place it on the eminence for which it was evidently fitted. The first number of Blackwood's Magazine appeared in April, 1817, and, though bearing more resemblance to preceding publications of the same kind than it afterwards assumed, the work was from the first acknow- ledged by the public to possess superior merit. The publishers of the elder magazines made an almost immediate, though indirect confession to this effect, by attempts to put new and more attractive faces upon their publications, and stimu- late the lagging energies of those who conducted them. The two young men who were chiefly engaged upon the work of Mr Blackwood, having disagreed with him, were employed by Mr Constable to take the charge of the Scots Magazine, which he, like others in similar circumstances, was endeavouring to resuscitate from the slumbers of a century. Mr Blackwood was already more than inde- pendent of these gentlemen, in consequence of the aid which he was receiving from other quarters ; but bitter feelings had nevertheless been engendered, and these found vent, through the fancy of some of his new contributors, in the celebrated article in the seventh number of his magazine, styled " Translation of a Chaldee Manuscript." In this jeu d' esprit, the circumstances of the late feud, and the efforts of Mr Constable to repair the fortunes of his ancient mngazine, were thrown into a form the most burlesque that ever imagination conceived, though certainly with very little of the ill nature which the article unfortunately excited in the most of those who figured in it. In consequence of the painful feelings to which it gave rise, Mr Blackwood cancelled it from all the copies within his reach ; and it is now, consequently, very rarely to be met with. Blackwood's Magazine, as already hinted, had not been in progress for many months, before it obtained the support of new and unexpected talent Mr John Wilson, already distinguished by his beautiful poetry, and Mr John (r. Lockhart, whose more regular, though perhaps less brilliant genius has since found a fitting field in the management of the Quarterly Review, were at this time young men endeavouring to make their way at the Scottish bar. Having formed an attachment to Mr Blackwood, they threw into his literary repertory the overflowing bounties of two minds, such as rarely rise singly, and much more rarely together; and soon enchained the attention of the public to a series of articles not more remarkable for their ability, than for an almost unexampled recklessness of humour and severity of sarcasm. It is not to be denied that much offence was thus occasionally given to the feelings of individuals ; but, in ex- tenuation of any charge which can be rested on such grounds, it may be pointed out that, while Mr Blackwood had his own causes of complaint in the ungen- erous hostility of several of his commercial brethren, the whimsical genius of his contributors had unquestionably found a general provocation in the overweening pretensions and ungracious deportment of several of their literary seniors, some of whom had, in their own youth, manifested equal causticity, with certainly no greater show of talent. To these excuses must be added the relative one of 250 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD. politics. Mr Blackwood from the first took a strong part with the existing Tory government, which in Edinburgh had been powerfully supported hereto- fore in every manner except by the pen, while the opposition had long pos- sessed a literary organ of the highest authority. In treating, therefore, of some of the juvenile indiscretions of this extraordinary work, and those connected with it, we must, if willing to preserve impartiality, recollect the keenness witli which politics and political men were then discussed. In the management of the magazine, Mr Blackwood at all times bore in his own person the principal share. The selection of articles, the correspondence with contributors, and other duties connected with editorship, were performed by him during a period of seventeen years, with a degree of skill, on \\hich it is not too much to say that no small portion of the success of the work de- pended. In its earlier years he contributed two or three articles himself; but to this, as a practice, he had a decided objection, as he could easily perceive that an editor, especially one like himself not trained to letters, is apt to be biassed respecting his own compositions. It may easily be conceived, however, that, in the management of the literary and mercantile concerns of such a work, there was sufficient employment for even a man of his extraordinary energies. And no small praise must it ever be to the subject of this brief memoir, that, during so long a period, he maintained in his work so much <>i the vivid spirit with which it set out; kept up so unfailing a succession of brilliant articles in general literature, altogether exclusive of the regular papers of Mr Wilson, as if he were exhausting mind after mind among the literary men of his country, and still at no loss to discover new ; and never, throughout his whole career, varied in a single page from the political key-note which he had struck at the commencement. To have done these things, and with so much apparent ease to himself, and so little ostentation,- for these were features in his masterly career argues in our opinion a character of unwonted vigour, as well as no small share of intellectual power. The magazine eventually reached a circulation not much short of ten thousand copies, and, while reprinted in North America, found its way from the pub- lisher's warehouse into every other part of the world where the English language was spoken. Notwithstanding the great claims it made upon his time, Mr Blackwood continued till his death to transact a large share of business as a general publisher. Not long before that event, he completed the Edinburgh Encyclopedia in eighteen volumes quarto, and, among his other more important publications, may be reckoned Kerr's Collection of Voyages and Travels, in eighteen volumes octavo. The chief distinct works of Messrs Wilson, Lockhart, Hogg, Moir, dalt, and other eminent persons connected with his magazine, and some of the writings of Sir Walter Scott, were published by Mr Blackwood. He also continued till the close of his career to carry on an extensive trade in retail bookselling. Mr Blackwood died, September 16, 1834, after a painful illness of four months. His disease, a tumour in the groin, had in that time exhausted his physical energies, but left his temper calm and unruffled, and his intellect en- tire and vigorous even to the last. In the words of his obituarist, " No man ever conducted business in a more direct and manly manner than Mr Blackwood. His opinion was on all occasions distinctly expressed ; his questions were ever explicit ; his answers conclusive. His sincerity might sometimes be considered as rough, but no human being ever accused him either of flattering or. of shuffling ; and those men of letters who were in frequent communication with him, soon conceived a respect and confidence for him, which, save in a very few instances, ripened HUGH BLAIR, D.D. 251 into cordial regard and friendship. The masculine steadiness, and impertur- bable resolution of his character, were impressed on all his proceedings ; and it will be allowed by those who watched him through his career, as the publisher of a literary and political miscellany, that these qualities were more than once very severely tested. He dealt by parties exactly as he did by individuals. Whether his principles were right or' wrong, they were his, and he never com- promised or complimented away one tittle of them. No changes, either of men or of measures, ever dimmed his eye, or checked his courage." Mr Blackwood was twice a magistrate of his native city, and in that capacity distinguished himself by an intrepid zeal in the reform of burgh management, singularly in contrast with his avowed sentiments respecting constitutional reform. BLAIR, HUGH, D.D. one of the most eminent divines and cultivators of polite literature, of the eighteenth century, was born at Edinburgh, April 7, 1718. His father, John Blair, a merchant of Edinburgh, and who at one time occupied a respectable office in the magistracy, was grandson to Robert Blair, an eminent divine of the seventeenth century, whose life is commemorated in its proper place in this work. John Blair was thus cousin-german to the author of the Grave, whose life follows, in the present work, that of his distinguished ancestor. John Blair, having impaired his fortune by engaging in the South Sea scheme, latterly held an office in the excise. He married Martha Ogston, and the first child of this marriage was the subject of the following memoir. Hugh Blair was early remarked by his father to possess the seeds of genius. For this reason, joined to a consideration, perhaps, of his delicate constitution, he was educated for the church. He commenced his academic career at the univer- sity 01 Edinburgh, October, 1730, and as his weakly health disabled him from enjoy i.ig the usual sports of boyhood, his application to study was very close. Amony- the numerous testimonies to his proficiency, which were paid by his in- structors, one deserves to be particularly mentioned, as, in his o\vn opinion, it determined the bent of his genius towards polite literature. An essay, HSPI TO* x.ct'hot,, that is, upon the BEAUTIFUL,' written by him when a student of logic in the usual course of academical exercises, had the good fortune to attract the notice of proiessor Stevenson, and, with circumstances honourable to the author, was appointed to be read in public at the conclusion of the session. This mark of distinction, which occurred in his sixteenth year, made a deep impression on his mind ; and the essay which merited it, he ever after recollected with partial alfection, and preserved to the day of his death, as the first earnest of his fame. At this time Dr Blair commenced a method of study, which contributed much to the accuracy and extent of his knowledge, and which he continued to practise occasionally even after his reputation was fully established. It consisted in mak- ing abstracts of the most important works which he read, and in digesting them according to the train of his own thoughts. History, in particular, hs resolved to study in this manner; and in concert with some of his youthful associates, he constructed a very comprehensive scheme of chronological tables, for .receiving into its proper place every important fact which should occur. The scheme de- vised by this young student for his own private use was afterwards improved, filled up, and given to the public, by his learned relative Dr John Blair, Preben- dary of Westminster, in his valuable work, " The Chronology and History of the World." 1 A technical Greek phrase, expressing the abstract idea of the perfection of beaur.A in objects of taste. A devotion to the " To kulon ' in that nation, was similar to what ciu moderns understand by a correct taste. 252 HUGH BLAIR, D.D. In 173U, on taking the degree of Master of Arts, Blair printed Iris thesis, " De Fundameutis et Obligations Legis Naturae," which contains a brief outline of these moral principles afterwards developed in his sermons, and displays the first dawnings of that virtuous sensibility, by which he was at all periods of his public life so highly distinguished. On the 21st of October, 1741, he \\as licensed as a preacher by the presbytery of Edinburgh, and soon began, in the usual manner, to exhibit himself occasionally in the pulpit. Heretofore, the only popular style of preaching in Scotland was that of the evangelical party, which consisted chiefly in an impassioned address to the devotional feelings of the audience. The moderate party, who were of course least popular had neither lost the practice of indulging in tedious theological disquisitions, nor acquired that of expatiating on the moral duties. The sermons of this young licentiate, which presented sound practical doctrines, in a style of language almost un- known in Scotland, struck the minds of the audience as something quite new. In the course of a very few months, his fame had travelled far beyond the bounds of his native city. A sermon which he preached in the West Church, produced an extraordinary impression, and Mas spoken of in highly- favourable terms to the Earl of Leven. His lordship accordingly present- ed the preacher to the parish church of Colessie in Fife, which happened to be then vacant He was ordained to this charge, September 23, 1742, but was not long permitted to labour in so confined a scene. In a few months, he was brought forward by his friends as candidate for the second charge of the church of Canongate, which may almost be considered a metropolitan situation. In the popular election which followed, he was successful against a very formidable com- petitor, Mr Robert Walker, then a favourite preacher. He was inducted to this charge, July 14, 1743, when he had little more than completed his twenty-fifth year. On the occasion of the insurrection of 1745, Blair preached a sermon, in the warmest strain of loyalty to the existing government, and which he after- wards printed. During the eleven years which he spent in the Canongate, his sermons attracted large audiences from the adjoining city, and were alike admir- ed for their eloquence and piety. They were composed with uncommon care ; and, occupying a middle place between the dry metaphysical discussion of one class of preachers, and the loose incoherent declamation of the other, they blend- ed together in the .happiest manner the light of argument with the warmth of exhortation, and exhibited captivating specimens of what had hitherto been rarely Heard in Scotland, the polished, well-compacted, and regular didactic oration. On the 11 th of October, 1754, he was called by the town council of Edin- burgh to accept of one of the city charges, that of Lady Yester's church, and OP the 15th of June, 1758, he was promoted by the same body to the highest situation attainable by a Scottish clergymen, one of the charges of the High Churclu This latter removal took place, according to the records of the town- council, " because they had it fully ascertained, that his translation would bo highly acceptable to persons of the most distinguished character and eminent rank in this country, who had seats in said church.'' In truth, this place of wor- ship might have been styled, in the absence of an episcopal system, the metro- politan church of Scotland. In it sat the lords of Session, and all the other great law and state officers, besides the magistrates and council, and a large congrega- tion of the most respectable inhabitants of the town. It might now, therefore, be said, that the eloquence of Blair had at last reached a fit theatre for its dis- play. In the year previous to this last translation, he had been honoured by the university of St Andrews with the degree of D. D. which was then very rare in Scotland, Hitherto, Blair's attention seems to have been chiefly devoted to his profession. HUGH BLAIR, D.D. 253 No production of his pen had yet been given to the world by himself, except two sermons preached on particular occasions, some translations of passages of Scripture, for the psalmody of the church, and the article on Hutcheson's system of Moral Philosophy for the Edinburgh Review, a periodical work begun in 1755, by Hume, Robertson, and others, and which only extended to two numbers. Standing, as he now did, at the head of his profession, and released by the la- bour of former years from the drudgery of weekly preparation for the pulpit, he began to think seriously on a plan for teaching to others the art which had contribut- ed so much to his own fame. Some years before, Dr Adam Smith had delivered in Edinburgh a series of lectures on rhetoric and elegant literature, which had been well received. In 1759, Dr Blair commenced, with the approbation of the uni- versity, a course upon the principles of literary composition. The most zealous friends to this undertaking were David Hume and Lord Kames, the latter of whom had devoted much attention to the subject. The approbation bestowed upon the lectures was so very high, and their fame became so generally diffused, that the town-council resolved to institute a rhetorical class in the university, under his direction ; and, in 1762, this professorship was taken under the pro- tection of the crown, with a salary of seventy pounds a year. Dr Blair continu- ed to deliver his lectures annually till 1783, when he published them for the more extensive benefit of mankind. They are not by any means, nor were they ever pretended to be, a profound or original exposition of the laws of the belles lettres. They ate acknowledged to be a compilation from many different sources, and only designed to form a simple and intelligible code for the instruction of youth in this department of knowledge. Regarded in this light, they are entitled to very high praise, which has accordingly been liberally bestowed by the public. These lectures have been repeatedly printed, and still remain an indispensable monitor in the study of every British scholar. In 1763, Dr Blair made his first appearance before the world as an author or critic. He had, in common with his friend John Home, taken a deep interest in the exertions of Macpherson, for the recovery of the Highland traditionary poetry. Relying without suspicion upon the faith of the collector, he prefixed to the " Poems of Ossian ' a dissertation pointing out the beauties of those compositions. The labour must of course be now pronounced in a great mea- sure useless ; but nevertheless it remains a conspicuous monument of the taste of Dr Blair. It was not till 1777, that he could be prevailed upon to offer to the world any of those sermons with which- he had so long delighted a private congregation. We have his own authority for saying that it was his friend Lord Kames who was chiefly instrumental in prompting him to take this step. For a long period, hardly any sermons published either in England or Scotland, had met with suc- cess. The public taste seemed to have contracted an aversion to this species of composition. We are informed by Bos well in his life of Johnson, that when Blair transmitted a volume to Mr Strahan, the King's printer, that gentleman, rfter letting it lie beside him for some time, returned a letter discouraging the I ublication. It is probable that this opinion, which seems to have been given only on general grounds, might have caused Dr Blair to abandon his intention ; but fortunately, 31r Strahan had sent one of the sermons to Dr Johnson for his opinion, and after his unfavourable letter to Dr Blair had been sent off, he re- ceived from Johnson, on Christmas eve, 1770, a note, of which the following is a paragraph : " I have read over Dr Blair's first sermon, with more than appro- bation; to say it is good is to say too little.'' Mr Strahan had very soon alter this time a conversation withDr Johnson, concerning the sermons; and then he very candidly wrote again to Dr Blair, enclosing Johnson's note, and agreeing _ 254 HUGH BLAIR, D.D. to purchase the volume, with Mr Cadell, for one hundred pounds. The sale was so rapid and extensive, and the approbation of the public so high, that, to their honour be it recorded, the proprietors made Dr Blair a present, first of one sum, and afterwards of another, of fifty pounds ; thus voluntarily doubling the stipu- lated price. Perhaps, in no country, not even in his own, were these composi- tions so highly appreciated as in England. There they were received with the keenest relish, not only on account of their abstract excellence, but partly from a kind of surprise as to the quarter from which they came no devotional work, produced by Scotland, having ever before been found entitled to much atten- tion in the southern section of the island. The volume speedily fell under the attention of George III., and his virtuous consort, and was by them very highly admired. His majesty, with that wise and sincere attention to the interests o! religion and virtue, which has given to his reign a respectability above all th.M military or political glory can purchase, was graciously pleased to judge the au- thor worthy of a public reward. By a royal mandate to the exchequer in Scot- land, dated July 25, 1780, a pension of 200 a-year, was bestowed on la- Blair. It is said that the sermons were first read in the royal closet, by the Earl of Mansfield; and there is little reason to doubt that they were indebted in some degree to the elocution of the " elegant Murray" for the impression which they produced upon the royal family. During the subsequent part of his life, Dr Blair published three other volumes of sermons; and it might safely be said that each successive publication only tended to deepen the impression produced by the first. These compositions, which were translated into almost every language in Europe, formed only a small part of the discourses which he prepared for the pulpit The number of those which remained, was creditable to his professional character, and exhibited a convincing proof that his fame as a public teacher had been honourably pur- chased, by the most unwearied application to the private and unseen labours of his office. Out of his remaining manuscripts, he had prepared a fifth volume, which appeared after his death ; the rest, according to an explicit injunction in his will, were committed to the flames. The last sermon which he composed was one in the fifth volume, " on a life of dissipation and pleasure." Though written at the age of eighty-two, it is a dignified and eloquent discourse, and may be regarded as his solemn parting admonition to a class of men whose con- duct is highly important to the community, and whose reformation and virtue he had long laboured most zealously to promote. The SERMONS of BLAIR, are not now, perhaps, to be criticised with that blind admiration which ranked them, in their own time, amidst the classics of English literature. The present age is now generally sensible that they are deficient in that religious unction uhich constitutes the better part of such compositions, and are but little calculated to stir and rouse the heart to a sense of spiritual duty. Every thing, however, must be considered more or less relatively. Blairs mind was formed at a time when the fervours of evangelical divinity were left by the informed classes generally, to the lowly and uninstructed hearts, which, after all, are the great citadels of religion in every country. A certain order of the clergy, towards the end of the eighteenth century, seemed to find it necessary, in order to prevent an absolute revolt of the higher orders from the standards of religion, to accommodate themselves to the prevailing taste, and only administer moral discourses, with an insinuated modicum of real piety, where their proper purpose unquestionably is to maintain spiritual grace in the breasts of the people, by all the means which the gospel has placed within their reach. Thus, as Blair preached to the most refined congregation in Scotland, he could hardly have failed to fall into this prevalent fashion ; and he perhaps considered, with HUGH BLAIR, D.D. 255 perfect sincerity, that he was justified by the precept of St Paul, which com- mands the ministers of religion to he "all things to all men." Religious feeling is modified by time and place ; and I do not apprehend it to be impossible th.it the mind of Hugh Blair, existing at the time of his celebrated ancestor, might have exerted itself in maintaining the covenant, and inspiring the popu- lace with the energy necessary for that purpose ; while the intellect and heart of his predecessor, if interchanged, might have spent their zeal in behalf of Henry Viscount Melville, and in gently pleasing the minds of a set of modern indifier- ents, with one grain of the gospel dissolved into a large cooling-draught of moral disquisition. The remaining part of the life of Blair hardly affords a single additional inci- dent. He had been married, in 1748, to his cousin, Katherine Bannatyne, daughter of the ttev James Bannatyne, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. By this lady he had a son who died in infancy, and a daughter, who survived to her twenty-first year, the pride of her parents, and adorned with all the accomplish- ments which belong to her age and sex. Mrs Blair, herself a woman of great good sense and spirit, was also taken from him a few years before his death, after she had shared with the tenderest affection in all his fortunes, and contributed nearly half a century to his happiness and comfort. The latter part of his life was spent in the enjoyment of a degree of public respect which falls to the lot of few men, but which was eminently deserved by him, both on account of his high literary accomplishments, and the singular purity and benevolence of his private character. He latterly was enabled, by the various sources of income which he enjoyed, to set up a carriage ; a luxury enjoyed, perhaps, by no pre- decessor in the Scottish church, and by very few of his successors. He also maintained an elegant hospitality, both at his town and country residences, which were much resorted to by strangers of distinction who happened to visit Edinburgh. It may be curious to know in what manner those discourses were delivered from the pulpit, which have so highly charmed the world in print As might be easily supposed, where there was so much merit of one kind, there could scarcely, without a miracle, be any high degree of another and entirely different kind. In truth, the elocution of Dr Blair, though accompanied by a dignified and im- pressive manner, was not fit to be compared with his powers of composition. His voice was deformed by a peculiarity which I know not how to express by any other term than one almost too homely for modern composition, a burr. He also wanted all that charm which is to be derived Irom gesticulation, and, upon the whole, might be characterized as a somewhat formal preacher. In what is called church politics, Dr Blair was a strenuous moderate, but never took an active share in the proceedings of the church. A constitutional delicacy of organization unfitted him for any scene where men have to come into strong and personal collision. In temporal politics, he was a devout admirer of the existing constitution, and a zealous supporter of the tory government which flour- ished during the greater part of the reign of George III. With Viscount Mel- ville, to whose father he had dedicated his thesis in early youth, he maintained a constant interchange of civilities. At the breaking out of the French revolu- tion, he exerted himself in the most energetic manner to stop the tide of disaffec- tion and irreligion, which at one particular crisis seemed to threaten all existing institutions, lie declared in the pulpit that none but a good subject could be a good Christian ; an expression so strongly akin to the ancient doctrines of pas- sive obedience and non-resistance, that it can only be excused by the particular circumstances of the time. The mind of Blair was too fastidiously exact and elegant to display any thing of the majestic. Possessing more taste than genius, 256 JAMES BLAIR. he never astonished in conversation by any original remark. In company, he made a far less striking appearance than the half-instructed peasant Burns, who at his first visit to Edinburgh, was warmly patronized by Dr Blair. In some points of view, his mind bore an unprepossessing aspect. He Mas content tr read, and weak enough to admire the wretched fictitious compositions which ap- peared in that age under the denomination of novels. He would talk profusely of the furniture of the room in which he was sitting, criticising every object with a sincere and well-weighed attention, which would not have been ill-bestowed upon the most solemn subjects. In his dress, and in almost all points of mere externe and ceremonial form, he was minutely fastidious. He was also so fond of the approbation of his fellow-creatures in moderation, a most useful feature of character that even very marked flattery was received by him not only with- out displeasure, but with an obviously keen relish, that said little either for his discrimination or his modesty. Yet, with these less worthy points of charac- ter, Blair had no mean moral feelings. He was incapable of envy ; spoke liberally and candidly of men whose pursuits and opinions differed from his own, and was seldom betrayed into a severe remark upon any subject unconnected with actual vice. Though his bodily constitution was by no means robust, yet by habitual t m- perance and by attention to health, his life was happily prolonged beyond the usual period. For some years he had felt himself unequal to the fatigue of in- structing his very large congregation from the pulpit; and under the impression which this feeling produced, he has been heard to say, with a sigh, that, " he was left almost the last of his contemporaries." Such, nevertheless, was the vigour of his mind, that, in 1799, when past the eightieth year of his age, he composed and preached one of the most effective sermons he ever delivered, on behalf of the fund for the benefit of the sons of the clergy. He was also employed during the summer of 1 800, in preparing his List volume for the press ; and for this purpose, he copied the whole with his own hand. He began the winter, pleased with himself on account of this exertion ; and his friends were flattered with the hope that he might live to enjoy the accession of emolument and fame which he expected it would bring. But the seeds of a mortal disease were lurking within him. On the 24th of December, he felt slight pain in his bowels, with which neither he nor his friends were alarmed. On the afternoon of the 2<>th, this pain encreased, and violent symptoms began to appear ; the causes of which were then unfortunately unknown both to himself and his physician. He had for a few years laboured under an inguinal hernia. This malady, which he was imprudently disposed to conceal, he considered as trifling; and he understood that by taking the ordinary precautions, nothing was to be apprehended from it It settled, however, into a stoppage of the bowels, and ere the physician was made aware of his condition, an inflammation had taken place, and he conse- quently survived only till the morning of the 27th, thus expiring almost at the same time with that century of the Christian epoch, of which he had been one of the most distinguished ornaments. He died in the eighty-third year of his age, and the fifty-ninth of his profession as a minister of the gospel. BLAIR, JAMBS, an eminent divine, was reared for the episcopal church of Scot- land, at the time when it was struggling with the popular dislike in the reign of Charles II. Discouraged by the equivocal situation of that establishment in Scotland, he voluntarily abandoned his preferments, and removed to England, where he was patronized by Compton, Bishop of London. By this prelate he was prevailed upon to go as a missionary to Virginia, in 1G85, and, having given the greatest satisfaction by his zeal in the propagation of religion, he was, in 1689, preferred to the office of commissary to the bishop, whidi was the high JOHN BLAIR. JOHN BLAIR, LL.D. 257 est ecclesiastical dignity in that province. His exertions were by no means confined to his ordinary duties. Observing the disadvantage under which the province laboured through the want of seminaries for the education of a native clergy, he set about, and finally was able to accomplish, the honourable work of founding the college of Williamsburgh, which was afterwards, by his personal intervention, endowed by king William III., with a patent, under the title of the William and Mary College. He died in 1743, after having been president of this institution for about fifty, and a minister of the gospel for above sixty years. He had also enjoyed the office of president of the council of Virginia. In the year before his death, he had published at London, his great work, entitled, " Our Saviour's Divine Sermon on the Mount Explained, and the Practice of it Recommended, in divers sermons and discourses," 4 vols. 8vo., which is styled by Dr Waterland, the editor of a second edition, a " valuable treasure of sound divinity and practical Christianity." BLAIR, JOH\, a churchman of noble family, who, being compelled by the tyranny of Edward I. in Scotland to join the bands of Sir William Wallace, be- came chaplain to that hero, and did not scruple also to take a share in his battles. He wrote an account of the deeds of Wallace, Avhich is now lost, but is supposed to have furnished materials to Blind Harry. Another work of Blairs was styled, " De Liberata Tyrannide Scotia." BLAIR, JOHN, L.L.D. an eminent chronologist, was, as already mentioned in the memoir of Dr Hugh Blair, a relative of that distinguished personage. He received a clerical education at Edinburgh, and afterwards went in search of employment to London, along with Mr Andrew Henderson, author of a " History of the Rebellion of 1745," and many other works, and who, for some years, kept a bookseller's shop in Westminster Hall. As Henderson describes himself as re- siding in Edinburgh at the time of the battle of Prestonpans, it is probable that Blair's removal to London took place after that event Henderson's first em- ployment was that of an usher at a school in Hedge Lane, in which he was succeeded by Blair. The attention of the latter had probably been directed to chronology by the example of Dr Hugh Blair, who, as already mentioned, com- menced a series of tables of events, for his own private use, which ultimately formed the groundwork of the work given to the world, in 1754, under the title of "The Chronology and History of the World, from the Creation to the year of Christ, 1753; illustrated in fifty-six tables, of which four are introductory, and con- tain the centuries prior to the first Olympiad, and each of the remaining fifty- two contain, in one expanded view, fifty years, or half a century. By the Rev. John Blair, LL. D." This large and valuable work was published by subscrip- tion, and was dedicated to Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. In January, 1755, Dr John Blair was elected F. R. S. and in 1761, F. A. S. In 1756, he published a new edition of his " Chronology," In September, 1757. he was appointed chaplain to the Dowager Princess of Wales, and mathematical tutor to the Duke of York, (brother to George III ) ; and on Dr Townshend's promotion to the deanery of Norwich, the services of Dr Blair were rewarded, March, 1761, with a prebendal stall in Westminster abbey. Such a series of rapidly accumulating honours has fallen to the lot of very few Scottish adventurers. But this was not destined to be the end of his good fortune. He had only been prebend of Westminster six days, when the death of the vicar of Hinckley, in Leicestershire, enabled the Dean and Chapter to present him to that valuable living, to which was soon after added, the rectory of Burtoncoggles in Lincolnshire. In 1763-4, he made the tour of the continent, in company with his royal pupiL A new and enlarged edition of his " Chronology" appeared in 1768, and in 1771 he was presented, by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, to the vicarage of St Bride's in the 2jS PATRICK BLAIR, M.D. city of London, which made it necessary for him lo resign Hinckley. In 1776, he resigned St Bride's, in order to succeed to the rectory of St John the Evan- gelist in Westminster; and in June that year, he obtained a dispensation to hold this benefice along with that of Horton, near Colebrooke, in Buckinghamshire. In the memorable sea-fight of the 12th of August, 1782, his brother, Captain Blair, in the command of the Anson, was one of three distinguished officers who fell, and to whom the country afterwards voted a monument. This event gave such a shock to the venerable doctor, who at that time suffered under influenza, that he died, at his house in Derm's Yard, Westminster, on the 24th of June following. A work entitled, " Lectures on the Canons of the Old Testament," appeared after his death ; but his best monument unquestionably will be his Chronology, the value of which has been so amply acknowledged by the world. BLAIR, PATRICK, M. D. an eminent botanist in the earlier period of the exis- tence of that science in Britain, was first known as a practitioner of surgery and physic at Dundee, where he brought himself into prominent notice as an anato- mist, 1706, by the dissection of an elephant which died near that place. He was a non-juror or Scottish episcopalian, and so far attached to the exiled family of Stuart, as to be imprisoned during the insurrection of 1715, as a suspected person. He afterwards removed to London, where he recommended himself to the attention of the Royal Society by some discourses on the sexes of flowers. His stay in London was short, and after leaving it, he settled at Boston in Lin- colnshire, where Dr Pulteney conjectures that he practised physic during the remainder of his life. The same writer, in his " Historical and Biographical Sketches of English Botany," supposes that his death happened soon after the publication of the seventh Decad of his Pharmacobotanoloyia, in 1728. Dr Blair's first publication was entitled, " Miscellaneous Observations in Phy- sic, Anatomy, Surgery, and Botanicks, 8vo, 1718." In the botanical part of this work, he insinuates some doubts relating to tbe method suggested by Petion and others, of deducing the qualities of vegetables from the agreement in natu- ral characters ; and instances the Cynoglosswm, as tending to prove the fallacy of tin's rule. He relates several instances of the poisonous effects of plants, and thinks the Echium Marinum (Pulmonaria Maritima of Linnaeus) should be ranked in the genus Cynoglossum, since it possesses a narcotic power. He de- scribes and figures several of the more rare British plants, which he had dis- covered in a tour made into Wales ; for instance, the Rumex Digynus, Lobelia Dortmanna, Alisma Ranunculoides, Pyrola Rotundifolia, Alchemilla Alpina, etc. But the work by which he rendered the greatest service to botany, originated with his "Discourse on the Sexes of Plants," read before the Royal Society, and afterwards greatly amplified, and published, at the request of several members of that body, under the title of "Botanical Essnys, 8vo, 1720." This treatise is divided into two parts, containing five essays ; the three first respecting what is proper to plants, and the two last, what is proper to plants and animals. This is acknowledged, by an eminent judge, to have been the first complete work, at least in the English language, on that important department of botanical science, the sexes of the plants. 'I he author shows himself well acquainted, in general, with all the opinions and arguments which had been already circulated on the same subject. The value of the work must not be estimated by the measure of modern knowledge, though even at this day it may be read by those not criti- cally versed in the subject, with instruction and improvement. A view of the several methods then invented, cannot be seen so connectedly in any other Eng- lish author. Dr Blair strengthened the arguments in proof of the sexes of plants, by sound reasoning and some new experiments. His reasons against Morland's opinion of the entrance of the Farina into the Vasculum Senunale, ROBERT BLAIR. 259 and his refutation of the Lewenhcekian theory, have met with the sanction of the greatest names in modern botany. Dr Blair's last distinct publication, which he did not live to complete, was " Parmacobotanologia, or an Alphabetical and Clas- sical Dissertation on all the British indigenous and garden plants of the New Dispensatory," 4to, 1723 28. In this work, which was carried no furtherthan the letter H, the genera and species are described, the sensible qualities and medicinal powers are subjoined, with the pharmnceutical uses, and the author tlso notices several of the more rare English plants, discovered by himself in the environs of Boston. Dr Blair's fugitive writings consist of various papers in the Philosophical Transactions, of which one of the most remarkable is an ac- count of the Anatomy and Osteology of the Elephant, drawn up from his obser- vations in dissecting the animal above alluded to at Dundee. BLAIR, ROBERT, an eminent divine of the seventeenth century, was the sixth and youngest son of John Blair of Windyedge in Ayrshire, and Beatrix 3Iuir a lady of the honourable house of Rowallan. He was born at Irvine in 1593, and received his education at the college of Glasgow. After acting for some time as assistant to a teacher in that city, he was appointed, in the twenty-second year of his age, to be a regent or professor in the college. In 1616, he was licensed as a minister of the gospel. Happening soon after to preach before the celebrated Robert Bruce, and being anxious to have the judgment of so great and good a man upon his discourse, he took the liberty of directly asking him how he liked the sermon : Bruce said, " I found your sermon very polished and well digested, but there is one thing I did miss in it to wit, the spirit of God ; 1 found not that." This criticism made a deep and useful impression upon the young preacher. The prospects of Mr Blair at Glasgow were clouded in 1622, by the accession of Cameron to the office of Principal in the College. This divine, having been imbued in France with the tenets of Arminius, became a zealous promoter of the views of the court, for the introduction of Episcopacy into Scot- land. Blair speedily became obnoxious to his evil offices, and found it necessary to resign his charge. For some years he officiated to a Presbyterian congregation at Bangour in Ireland, but, in 1632, was suspended, along with the equally famous preacher Livingstone, by the Bishop of Down. He then went over to court, to implore the interference of the King, who at length gave a favourable answer to his petition, writing with his own hand upon the margin, " Indulge these men, for they are Scotsmen ;" an expression certainly honourable to the heart of the unfortunate monarch. Blair was one of those divines, who were reputed in Scotland to have direct communications with heaven, and a power of prophetic vision. While waiting anxiously for the return of his petition, he asked, and, as it is recorded by his biographer, received, a sign irom heaven, assuring him that his wishes would be realised. He also " had from Ezekiel xxiv. 16. a strange discovery of his wife's death, and the very bed whereon she was lying, and the particular acquaintances attending her ; and although she was in good health at his return home, yet in a little all this came to pass," 1 He had not been long re-established at Bangour, when the bishop found further fault with him, and again sentenced him to be expelled. He now joined in a scheme set on foot by various Presbyterian clergymen in similar circumstances, for fitting up a ship, and emigrating to New England. But being driven back by a storm, they conceived that the Almighty will was opposed to their resolution, and accordingly abandoned the scheme. Blair returned to Scotland to mingle in the tumultuous scenes of the covenant He preached for some time at Ayr, and was afterwards settled by the General Assembly at St Andrews. In 1610, he accom- panied the Scottish army into England, and assisted at the negotiations for the i Scots Worthies, new edition, 1827, p. 302. 260 ROBERT BLAIR. peace of Kippon. After the first burst of the Irish rebellion of 1641, when the Presbyterians supplicated the General Assembly for a supply of ministers, Blair was one of those who went over. He soon returned, however, to liis charge at St Andrews. In autumn 1645, when the Scottish estates and General Assembly were obliged by the prevalence of the plague at Edinburgh to sit in St Andrews, Blair took a conspicuous part in the prosecution of Sir Robert Spottiswoode and other adherents of Montrose, who had been taken prisoners at Philiphaugh. Sir Robert, who had accompanied Montrose as a mere civilian, upon an embassage from the King, was sentenced, by a flagrant violation of the law, to be beheaded as a traitor. In reality this dignified and respectable person was sacri filled as an atonement for the exertions of his father, Archbishop Spottiswoode, to intro- duce Episcopacy. At this period, when toleration was sincerely looked upon as a fatal and deadly error, it was conceived, that to permit this person to escape would draw down the wrath of God upon the land. Blair, who entertained all these notions in the most earnest manner, was nevertheless anxious that an exer- tion should be made to turn Sir Robert from the errors of his faith, so that bo might at least die in the profession of the true religion. He therefore attended him in jail, and even at the scaffold, trying all his eloquence to work a conver- sion. Spottiswoode, who was one of the most learned and enlightened men of his age, appears to have looked upon these efforts in a different spirit from that in which they were made. He was provoked, upon the very scaffold, to reject the prayers of his pious monitor, in language far from courtly. 3Ir. Blair was equally unsuccessful with Captain Guthrie, son of the ex-bishop of Moray, who was soon after executed at the same place. Blair was one of the Scottish divines appointed, in 1645, to reason the King out of his Episcopal prepossessions at Newcastle, The celebrated Cant, one of his co-adjutors in this task, having one day accused his 3Iajesty of favouring Popery, Mr Blair interrupted him, and hinted that this was not a proper time or place for making such a charge. The unfortunate monarch, who certainly had a claim to this amount upon the gratitude of Blair, appears to have felt the kindness of the remark. At the death of Henderson, his Majesty appointed Blair to be his successor, as chaplain for Scotland. In this capacity, he had much intercourse with the King, who, one day, asked him if it was warrantable in prayer to determine a controversy. Blair, taking the hint, said, that in the prayer just finished, he did not think that he had determined any controversy. " Yes," said the King, " you determined the Pope to be Antichrist, which is a controversy among divines." Blair said he was sorry that this should be disputed by his 3Iajesty; for certainly it was not so by his father. This remark showed great acuteness in the divine, for Charles, being a constant defender of the opinions of his father, whose authority he esteemed above that of all professional theologians, was totally unable to make any reply. The constancy of the King in his adherence to a church, which his coronation oath had obliged him to defend, rendered, as is well known, all the advices of the Scottish divines unavailing. After spending some months with his Majesty, in his captivity at Newcastle, Mr Blair returned to Scotland. In 1648, when Cromwell came to Edinburgh for the first time, the Commis- sion of the Church sent three divines, including Mr Blair, to treat with him for a uniformity of religion in England. The sectarian general, who looked upon the Scottish Presbytery as no better than English Episcopacy, but yet was anxi- ous to conciliate the northern divines, entertained this legation wi:li smooth speeches, and made many solemn appeals to God, as to the sincerity of his inten- tions. Blair, however, had perceived the real character of Cromwell, and thought it necessary to ask explicit answers to the three following categories: I, What EGBERT BLAIR. 261 was his opinion of monarchical government ? To this he answered, that he was for monarchial government ; which exactly suited the views of the Scottish Pres- byterians. 2, What was his opinion anent toleration? He answered confi. dently that he was altogether against toleration ; which pleased, if possible, still better. 3, What was his opinion concerning the government of the church? " Oh, now," said Cromwell, *' Mr Blair, you article me too severely ; you must pardon me that I give you not a present answer to this." When the deputation left him Mr David Dickson said to Mr Blair, " I am glad to hear this man speak no worse ; " to which the latter replied, " If you knew him as well as I, you would not believe a word he says ; for he is an egregious dissembler." Blair continued to be a zealous and useful minister during the usurpation of Cromwell, but after the Restoration, fell speedily under the censure of his metropolitan, Archbishop Sharpe. For some years, he had no regular place of worship, but preached and ministered when he met with a favourable opportunity. During his later years, being prohibited from coming within twenty miles of St Andrews, he lived 'at Meikle Couston, in the parish of Aberdour, where he died, August 27, 1666, in the 73d year of his age. He was buried in the church-yard of Aberdour, where there is a small tablet to his memory. Robert Blair was the author of a Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, and also of some political pieces, none of which have come down to modern times. His abilities were singularly revived in more than one branch of his numerous progeny, particularly in his grandson, the author of " The Grave," and his two great-grandsons, Dr Hugh Blair, and the late Robert Blair, President of the Court of Session. BLAIR, ROBERT, author of " The Grave, a Poem," was the eldest son of the Rev. David Blair, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, and chaplain to the King, who, in his turn, was son to the subject of the preceding article. The mother of the author of " The Grave," was a Miss Nisbet, daughter of Mr Nis- bet of Carfin. He was born in the year 1699, and after the usual preparatory studies, was ordained in 1731, minister of Athelstaneford, in East Lothian, where he spent the remainder of his life. Possessing a small fortune in addition to his stipend as a parish-clergyman, he lived, we are told, rather in the style of a country gentleman than of a minister, keeping company with the neigh- bouring gentry, among whom Sir Francis Kinloch of Gilmerton, patron of the parish, was one of his warmest friends. Blair, we are further informed, was at once a man of learning, and of elegant taste and manners. He was a botanist and florist, which he showed in the cultivation of his garden ; and was also conversant in optical and microscopical knowledge, on which subjects he carried on a correspondence with some learned men in England. He was a man of sin- cere piety, and very assiduous in discharging the duties of his clerical functions. As a preacher, he was serious and warm, and discovered the imagination of a poet. He married Miss Isabella Law, daughter of Mr Law of Elvingston, who had been Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh ; by his lady, who survived him, he had five sons and one daughter. His fourth son, who bore his own name, arose, through various gradations of honour at the Scottish bar, to be President of the Court of Session. Blair had turned his thoughts, at at early period of life, to poetry. While still very young, he wrote some verses to the memory of his future father-in-law, Mr Law, who was also his blood relation. We have his own testimony for say- ing, that his " Grave" was chiefly composed in that period of his life which preceded his ordination as a parochial clergyman. An original manuscript of the poem, in the possession of his son the Lord President, was dated 1741-2; and it appears, from a letter written by the author to Dr Doddridge, in February 262 HECTOR EOECE. that year, that he had just been endeavouring, through the influence of his cor- respondent, Dr Isaac Watts, to induce the London booksellers to publish it. It was rejected by two of these patrons of literature, to whom it had been recom- mended by Dr Watts; but was finally printed at London, in 1743, "for Mr Cooper." The author appears to have been seriously anxious that it 'should become a popular work, for he thus writes to Dr Doddridge : " In order to make it more generally liked, I was, obliged sometimes to go cross to my own inclination, well knowing that, whatever poem is written upon a serious argu- ment, must, upon that very account, be under serious disadvantages ; arid there- fore proper arts must be used to make such a piece go down with a licentious age, which cares for none of those things." This is not very clearly intelligible, but perhaps alludes to the plain, strong, rational, and often colloquially familiar language of the poem, which the plurality of modern critics will allow to be its best feature. " The Grave " is now to be esteemed as one of the standard clas- sics of English poetical literature, in which rank it will probably remain longer than many works of greater contemporary, or even present fame. BOECE, HECTOR, whose name was otherwise spelled Boyis, Boyes, Boiss, and Boice, an eminent, though credulous, historian, was born about the year 14o'5-6, at Dundee, and hence he assumed the surname of Deidonanus. His family were possessed of the estate of Panbride, or Balbride, in the county of Angus, which had been acquired by his grandfather, Hugh Boece, along with the heiress in marriage, in consequence of his services to David II. , at the battle of Dupplin. The rudiments of his education he received in his native town, which at that time, and for a long time after, Mas celebrated for its schools : he afterwards studied at Aber- deen, and finally at Paris, where, in 1497, he became a professor of philosophy in the college of Montacute. Of a number of the years of his life about this period, there is evidently nothing to be told. The garrulous and sometimes fabling Dr Mackenzie has filled up this part of his life with an account of his fellow-students at Paris, all of whose names, with one exception, have sunk into oblivion. That exception is the venerated name of Erasmus, who, as a mark of affection for Boece, dedicated to him a catalogue of his works, and maintained with him in after life as regular a correspondence as the imperfect communication of those times would permit. In the year 1500, Bishop Elphinstone, who had just founded the College of Aberdeen, invited Boece home to be the principal. The learned professor, reluctant to quit the learned society he enjoyed at Paris, was only persuaded to accept this invitation, as he informs us himself, "by means of gifts and promises ; the principal inducement must of course have been the salary, which amounted to forty merks a-year equal to two pounds three shil- 1 lings and fourpence sterling a sum, however, which Dr Johnson remarks, was then probably equal, not only to the needs, but to the rank of the President of King's College. On his arrival at Aberdeen he found, among the Chanon Begulars, a great many learned men, and became a member of their order. From this order, indeed, the professors seem to have been selected. As colleague in his new office, Hector Boece associated with himself Mr William Hay, a gentleman or the shire of Angus, who had studied along with him under the same masters both at Dundee and Paris. Alexander Hay, a Chanon of Aberdeen, was the first teacher of scholastic theology in that university. David Guthry and James Ogilvy are mentioned as professors of civil and canon Law; but whether they were contemporary teachers or succeeded each other in the same chair, is not quite dear. Henry Spital was the first who taught philosophy at Aberdeen, and for this purpose he wrote An Easy Introduction to the philosophy of Aristotle. Ano- ther of the learned professors was Alexander Galloway, rector of Kinkell, who HCIPAI, OK KING'S COLLEGE . ABERDEEN. FROM THE ORIGINAL PAINTING IN THAT COLLEGE. HECTOR BOECE. 263 was author of a treatise on the ./Ebudae or Western Isles, with an account of the Clag or Claik Geese, and the trees upon which they were found to grow a work no longer to be found, but the best parts of which are probably embodied in Bosce's history of Scotland. Arthur Boece, brother to the principal, was also one of his assistants. He was a tutor of the canon law, and a licentiate in the civil ; a man of great eloquence and singular erudition. Besides these, Boece has com memorated several others, who were his assistants, and reflected lustre upon the dawn of learning in the north. Some of them were, according to the learned principal's account, men of high eminence, whose influence was great in the days in which they lived, and whose example extended even to after ages. He par- ticularly refers to John Adam, who was the first to receive the degree of Doctoi of theology in the University ; after which he was made principal of the Domini- can order, which, from the vicious lives, the poverty, and the ignorance of itt members, had sunk into great contempt, but which he raised into high respecta- bility, both for piety and learning. On the death of his patron Bishop Elphin- stone, in 1514, Boece, out of gratitude for his friendship, and respect for hit great learning and exemplary virtue, resolved to give to the world an account oi his life, in composing which he was so struck with the exemplary conduct of others who had filled that see, that he determined to write the history of the lives of the whole of the bishops of Aberdeen. This laborious undertaking he completed in Latin, after the custom of the age, and gave to the world in the year 1522. It was printed at Paris by Badius Ascensius. His next, and by far his greatest work, was a history of Scotland, from the earliest accounts. To this work he Mas probably stimulated by the example of John Mair or Major, a tutor of the Sorbonne, and principal of the college of St Salvadore at St Andrews, whose history of Scotland, in six books, was pub- lished at Paris in the year 1521. The Scotichronicon had been originally written by John Fordun a canon of Aberdeen and continued by Walter Bower or Bowmaker to the death of James I., nearly a century previous to this, as had also the metrical CJironykil of Scotland by Andrew Winton prior of Lochleven. but all of them written in a style beneath the dignity of history, and disguised by the most contemptible fables. Mair was more studious of truth, but his narra- tive is meagre and his style loose and disjointed. Boece was a man of high talent, and one of the best Latin scholars which his country has at any period produced ; but he was credulous in a high degree, and most unquestionably has given his authority, such as it was, to many fables, if he did not himself abso- lutely invent them ; and he has rested the truth of his facts upon authors that never existed except in his own imagination. Of the " Inglis lyis," which Buchanan complains had cost him so much trouble to purge out of the " story of Scotland," perhaps he had not preserved the greatest number, but he certainly had more of the " Scottis vanitie " than even that great man was willing to part with. In imitation of some other historians he has introduced his history with the cos- mography of the country, in which he has been followed by Buchanan. Some passages we have selected from this part of the work, illustrative of his taste for, and his knowledge of, natural history, The extracts are taken from the transla- tion of John Bellenden archdeacon of Murray, which was made for the benefit of King James V., who, from a defective education, was unable to read the ori- ginal. That they may afford the reader a genuine specimen of our ancient Scottish prose, we have given these few extracts in their original orthography The first is the result of the inquiries of Hector Boece into the claicks or clag- geese that were supposed to grow upon trees. " Sum men belevis that thir claiks grows on treis by the nobbis, hot thair opinion is vane. And because the nature and procreation of thir claikis is 2G4 HECTOR BOECE. strange, we have maid na little laubore and diligence to serch the truth and veri- lie thairof. AVe have sailit throw the seis quhare they ar brede, and find by grit experience that the nature of the seis is inaire relevant cause of their pro- creation than ony other thyng ; for all treis that are ctissen in the seis be process of tynie apperis first worine etin, and in the small hollis and boris thairof growls small wormis. First they schaw thair heid and feit, and last of all they schaw thair pluiuis and wingis. Finally, quhen they are cumin to the just measure and (jiiantitie of gels, they fle in the aire as othir fowl is. Thairfore because the rude and ignorant pepyll saw oftymes the fruitis that fell off the treis quhilk stude nair the see, convertit within short tyme in geis, they belevit that thir geis grew upon the treis hingand be thair nobbis, sic like as apillis and uthir fruitis, bot thair opinion is nocht to be sustainit" This absurd nonsense is by the vulgar in some places believed to this day. The Barnacle has somewhat the appearance of a fowl in miniature inclosed in a shell, and this they suppose to be the young of the claik-goose. The following will not appear less wonderful to the greater part of readers than the procreation of the claiks. " The wolflis ar richt noy- sum to the tame bestial in all pairts of Scotland, except ane pairt thairof, named Glenmore ; in quhilk the tame bestial gets lytill damage of wyld bestial, espe- cially of toddis. For ilk hous nurises ane young todd certane days, and mengis the llcsho thairof after it be slane, with sic meit as they gif to thair fowlis or uthir small beistis, and sae mony as eits of this meit ar preservit twa months after fra ony damage be the toddis, for toddis will gust na fleshe that gusts of thair ain kynd ; and be thair bot ane beist or fowl that has nocht gustit of this meit the todd will chais it out amang ane thousand.'' Could the following art be re-discovered it would be a great saving in the article barley, and would besides render the malt duty of non-effect. " In all the desertis and muires of this realme growis an herbe namit hadder, bot [without] ony seid, richt nutritive baith to beistis and fowlis, spnciallie to beis. This herbe in the month of Julie has ane floure of purpure hew, als sueet as honey. The Pychts maid of this herbe sum tyme ane richt delicious and hal- sume drynk, nochtheless the manier of the making of it is perist be the exter- mination of the said Pychtis, for they schaw nevir the craft of the making of this drink bot to thair awn blude." The following particular description of gum found among the isles, probably ambergrese, is singularly characteristic of the author. " Amang the cragges of the islis growis ane maneir of goum, hewit like gold, and sa attractive of nature that it drawis strae, flax, or hemmis of claithis, to it, in the samin maneir as does ane adamant stane. This goum is general of see froth quhilk is cussin up be the continual repercussion of the w avis againis the see wallis, and throw ithand motion of the see it growis als teuch as glew, ay mair and mair, quhill at last it falls down of the crag in the see. Twa yeir afore the cumin of this beuk to light, arriwit ane grit lump of this goum in Buchquhane, als meikle as ane hors, and was brocht hame by the herdis, quhilkis war kepand thair beistis to thair housis and cussen in the fire, and because they fand ane smell and odour thair- with, they schaw to thair maister, that it was ganand for the sens [incense] that is maid in the kirks. Thair maister WITS ane rude man, as they war, and tuke bot ane lytill pairt thairof. The maist pairt was destroyit afore it cum to ony wyse maneiris, and sa the proverb was verifyit, ' The sou curis na balme.' " Of the miraculous the two following are tolerable specimens. " In Orkney is ane grit tische, mair than onie hors, of marvelous and incredible sleip. This fische, whan she begins to sleip, fesnis hir teith fast on ane crag abave the water. Als soon as the marineris fynis hir on sleip, they come with ane stark cabill in ane boat, and efter they have borit ane hole threw hir tail, they fesne hir to the HECTOR BOECE. 265 samyn. Als soon as this fische is awalknit, s v e maks her to loup with grit fure into the see, and fra she fynd hirseft' fast she wrythis hir out of hir awn skin and deis. Of the fatness that scho hes is maid oulie in grit quantitie, and of hir skin is maid strang cabills.'' " In Murrayland, in the kirke of Pette, the bains of lytill John remains in grit admiration of the pepilL He has been fourteen feit of hight, with square members effeiring thairto. Sax yeirs afore the cumin of this werk to lijjht, wa saw his hansh bain als meikle as the haill bain of ane man, for we shut our arm in the mouth thairof, by quliilk appeirs how strang and square pepill grew in our reyion afore they war effeminat with lust and intemperance of mouth.'? Spare diet seems to have been, in the estimation of our author, the all in all of human excellence, whether mentally or corporeally, and its disuse has certainly never been more eloquently bewailed than in the following paragraph : " I belief nane hes now sic eloquence nor fouth [plenty] of language that can suffi- ciently declare how far we in thir present dayis ar different fra the virtew and temperance of our eldaris. For quhare our eldaris had sobreatie, we have ebreitie and drunltness ; quhare they had plentie with sufficence, we have immo- derate desiris with superfluities ; as he war maist nobyl and honest that could devore and swelly maist ; throw quhilk we engorge and fillis ourself day and nycht sa full of meitis and drinkis, that we can nocht abstane quhill our wambe be sa swon, that it is unable to ony virtewous occupation, and nocht allanerly may surfect denners and sowpar suffice, bot also we must continue our shameful vorasitie with dubell denners and sowpars, throw quhilk mony of us gangis to na uthir bisines bot to fill and tuine our wambe. Na fische in the see, nor fowle in the aire, nor beist in the Avood, may half rest, bot ar socht here and thair to satisfy the hungry appetitis of gluttonis. Nocht allanerly are wynis socht in France, bot in Spayne, Italy, and Greece, and sumtyme baith Aphrick and Asya ar socht for new delicious meitis and wynis to the samyn effect. The young pepill and bairnis follow thir unhappie customes of thair faderis, and givis themself to lust and insolence, havind all vertewous craftis in contemption, and sa whan tyme of weir occurris, they are sa effeminat and soft, that they pass on hors as heavie martis, and are sae fat and grown that they may do na thing in compare of the soverane manheid of thair antecessors. Als sun as they ar returnit hame becaus thair guddis ar not sufficient to nuris them in voluptuous life and pleasur of thair wambe, they are given to all maneir of avarice, and outhir castis them to be strang and maisterful theves, or else sawers of dissention amang the nobyllis." Perhaps, after all, the last paragraph of Boece's Cosmography of Scotland might have been sufficient to attest his character : " Thus it were needful to put an end to our Cosmographie, were not an uncouth history tarryis a litill my pen. Mr Jame Ogilby, with uther nobylmen, wes send as ambassatouris frae the maist nobill prince king James the feird to the kyng of France, and be tempest of see they war constrainit to land in Norway, quhare they saw nocht far fra thaim mony wild men nakit and ruch, on the sam maner as they war painted. At last they got advertising by land wart pepill that they war doum beestis under the figur of men, quha in tyme of nicht usit to come in grit companies to lamhvrirt villages, and quhan they fand na dosfgis they brek up doris, and slays all the pepill that they fynd thair intilL They are of sa huge strenth that they pull up treis by the rutis and fechts thairwith amang tliaimself. The ambassatouris war astonist at thir monstouris, and made strick watches with grit fyres birnand all nicht, and on the morrow they pullit up sails and depairtit. Forther the Nor- way men schow that there wes also nocht far fra thaim an pepill that swomit all the symer, like fische in the see, leifand on fische, bot in the winter, because the 200 HECTOR BOECE. water is cauld, they leif upon wild beistis that descendis fra the moiintainis, and sa endis here the Cosmography of Scotland." Such are specimens of what passed for veritable history in Scotland scarcely three centuries ago, and sucli was the weakness of a man who was certainly in his own day, even by foreigners, reckoned an ornament to his country. The truth is, knowledge in those da>s was most deplorably limited hy the difficulty of travelling, and the paucity of books. A geographical writer sat in his study, ignorant personally of every thing except what was immediately around him, and liable to be imposed upon by the stories of credulous or lying travellers, which he had no means of correct- in? or disproving. The philosophical writer was equally liable to be im- posed upon by false and superstitious systems, which the age produced in great abundance. Boece's history was published at Paris in 1526, in a folio volume, under the title of " Scotorum Historian, a prima gentis origine, cum aliarum et rerum et gentium illustratione non vulgari." This edition, which was printed by Badius, contains seventeen books. A second was printed at Lausanne, and published at Paris in 1574, about forty years after the death of Boece. In this, were added the eighteenth and part of a nineteenth book, written by himself; and a con- tinuation of the history to the end of the reign of James III., by Ferrarius. a learned Piedmontese, who came to Scotland in 1528, in the train of Robert lleid, Abbot of Kinloss, and afterwards Bishop of Orkney. Soon after the publication of his history, (1527,) James V. bestowed upon Boece a pension of 50 Scots yearly, which was to be paid by the sheriff ot Aberdeen out of the king's casualties. Two years afterwards, a new precept was issued, directing this pension to be paid by the customers of Aberdeen, until the king should promote him to a benefice of 100 nierks Scots of yearly value. Hy a subsequent regulation, the pension was partly paid by the king's comptmller, and partly by the treasurer. As the payment appears for the last time in the treasurer's books for 15.31, it is probable that about that time the king carried into effect his intention of ex- changing the pension for a benefice. The benefice so given was the Rectory or Fyvie in Aberdeenshire, which he held at his death in 1536, as appears from the record of the presentation of his successor. According to Gordon of Straloch, the death of the reverend historian happened at Aberdeen ; he was then about seventy years of age. In estimating the character of Hector Boece, many circumstances must be taken into account It is certainly impossible to read his history without feeling contempt for his understanding as well as for his veracity ; yet when we consi- der the night of ignorance, imbecility, and error, in which he lived, contempt gives place to strong compassion, and we feel disposed to apologize for, rather than to blame him. Lord Hailes has bitterly remarked that the Scots were re- formed from popery, but not from Boece, and Pinkerton inveighs against him, as " the most egregious historical impostor that ever appeared in any country.'" It is enough, however, for the vindication of this elegant writer, that he fulfilled all the duties that could be demanded from a historian in his own time, and could not be expected, to use a more just expression of Dalrymple, to be a phi- losopher before philosophy revived. That he was incapable of designed impos- ture, appears incontestibly proved by the testimonies of his contemporaries ; Erasmus, in particular, styling him a man who " knew not what it was to make a lie." The highest honours have been bestowed upon the learning and genius of Boece. The same distinguished friend says, that he was a man of an extraor- dinary and happy genius, and possessed of great eloquence. Ferrarius, who HECTOR BOECE. 267 continued his history, styles him a man of singular learning and erudition, and one who had transmitted to posterity, in a most decent style, the noble and heroic achievements of our kings and predecessors, and he believes that there is no man on the like subject could have done it more significantly, or to better purpose. Paul Jovius, in his description of Britain, says, that Boece wrote the history of the Scots kings down to James III. " with equal eloquence and dili- gence." Of his description of Scotland, the rery subject upon which we have animadverted, he says that he made it his business, being led on by curiosity and the love of his country, to leave nothing unobserved that was praiseworthy, either in our deserts or mountains, or in our lakes and seas. Joannes Gualterius says, that he was exquisitely versed in all the parts of philosophy and thoology, and a most eminent historian. Bishop Lesly affirms that his style has the purity or Cfesar's, and that for the nervousness of his words and reasonings, he seems to have transferred to himself that of Livy. Bishop Spotswood says, that he was a great philosopher, and much commended by Erasmus for his eloquence, and though he has been by some English writers traduced for a fabulous and partial historian, they who take the trouble to peruse his history will perceive this to be spoken out of passion and malice, not from any just cause. Even Buchanan, though he charges him with having, in his description of Scotland, delivered some things not true, and with having drawn others into mistakes, as well as with being over credulous of those to whom he committed the inquiry after many of his matters, and in consequence published their opinions in preference to the truth, admits that he was not only notably learned in the liberal sciences above the condition of those times, but also of an exceeding courteous and humane inclination." Bartholomew Latomas, a well known annotator on Cicero, Terence, and Horace, honoured his memory by the following very beautif ' epitaph : QuisquU ad turaulum obstupescis istum, Taedas perpetua tnicare luce, Lucem perpetuis adesse taedis ; Et quis sic statuit cupis doceri ? Fiat : hie recubat Boethius Hector Ille qui patriae sure tenebras, Atque illas patrias nitore linguae Invecto Latiae fugavit ultra Thulen et vitrei vigoris Arcton. Persolvent Scotides proin Carnoenae, Cum passim incipiant queantque haberi, Romanae meritas suo Parent! Gratias, et tumulum volunt ad istum, Tsedas perpetua micare luce, Lucem perpetuis adesse taedis. To the merely English scholar, the following imitation will give some faint idea of this epitaph. That in this tomb the never-fading light Streams bright from blazing torches unconsumeH. Art thou amazed, and woultl'st tliou read aright? Hector Boethius, know, lies here inhumed. He who his country's hills and vales illumed With all the lustre of the Latian lore, Chasing the shades of darkness deep, fore-doonvd, , Beyond the freezing pole and Thule's shore. 268 DAVID BOGUE. For this adorn'd, graceful in Roman dress, Deserved thanks the Scotian Muses pay To him who gave them life decreeing thus Upon his tomb unfading light shall play, From torches burning bright, that ne'er shall know demy. )GUE, DAVID, the Father, as he has been called, of the London Missionary Society, was born at Hallydown in the Parish of Coldingham, Berwickshire, on the ISth February, 1750. His father, who farmed his own estate, was descended of a respectable family which had been long settled in the county. His studies are said to have been carried on at Dunse under the superintendence of the distinguished Cruikshanks, not less remembered for the success of his tuition, than lor the severity of his discipline. He afterwards removed to the university of Edinburgh, and studied moral philosophy under Adam Fergu- son, the well-known author of the " History of Civil Society." After undergo- ing the usual course of study, and being licensed as a preacher in connection with the church of Scotland, from want, perhaps, of very flattering prospects in his native country, he removed to London (1771), and was for some time em- ployed in the humble, but meritorious, capacity of usher in an academy at Edmonton, afterwards at Hampstead, and finally with the Kev. Mr Smith of Cam- berwell, whom he also assisted in the discharge of his ministerial duties both at Camberwell and at Silver Street, London, where he held a lectureship, the duties of which were at one timo performed by the celebrated John Home. The zeal with which Mr Bogue discharged his duties in both of these capacities, contri- buted not less to the satisfaction of Mr Smith, than to the increase of his own popularity. At length, on the resignation of the minister of an independent chapel at Gosport, Mr Bogue was unanimously chosen to fill the vacant charge. The duties of his new situation were such as to require all the strength of judg- ment and uncompromising inflexibility, tempered with Christian meekness, which entered so largely into his character. The charge was one of great difficulty, and of peculiar importance. The members of the congregation were divided among themselves, and part of them had indeed withdrawn from the communion altogether, during the ministry of his predecessor, and formed themselves into a separate congregation, under a rival minister ; but the exemplary conduct of Mr Bogue, and his zeal in the discharge of his duties, were such, that he had scarce occupied the pulpit twelve months when a re-union was effected. His fame, as a solid and substantial scholar, and an evangelical and indefatigable minister, now spread rapidly ; and, early in March 1780, he entered into the design of becoming tutor to an establishment for directing the studies of young men destined for the Christian ministry in connexion with the Independent communion. For the ability with which this establishment was conducted, both now and when it afterwards became a similar one for those destined for mission- ary labours, his praise is indeed in all the churches. It was in this period, though occupied with the details of what most men would have felt as a full occupation of their time, that his ever-active mind turned its attention to the formation of a grand missionary scheme, which afterwards resulted in the Lon- don Missionary Society. The influence which the establishment of this institu- tion was calculated to have on the public mind was grand and extensive, and the springing tip of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Religious Tract Society at short intervals, proves how much good was effected by the impetus thus given by one master-mind. In the establishment of both of these he likewise took an active part, contributing to the latter body the first of a series of pub- lications which have been of great usefulness. In the year 1796, Mr Bogue was called upon to show whether he, who had professed himself such a friend DAVID BOGUE. 209 to missionary enterprise, was sufficiently imbued with the spirit of the gospel to enable him to forsake home and the comforts of civilized society, to devote himself to its sacred cause. The call alluded to, was made and it was not made in vain by Robert Haldane, Esq. of Airdrie, who, to furnish funds for this grand enterprise, sold his estate. Their design was, in con- junction with two other divines, who had recently left the established church of Scotland, and become Independent ministers, to preach the gospel to the natives of India, and likewise to form a seminary for the instruction of fellow-labourers in the same field. The names of the two other ministers who intended to join in this, perhaps the noblest enterprise of Christian philanthropy of which our age can boast, and which will ever reflect a lustre on the church with which it originated, were the Rev. Greville Ewing of Glasgow, and the Rev. W. Innes of Edinburgh. But the design was frustrated by the jealousy of the East India Company, who refused their sanction to the undertaking a most fortunate cir- cumstance, as it afterwards appeared, in as far as the missionaries were indivi- dually concerned ; for a massacre of Europeans took place at the exact spot where it was intended the mission should have been established, and from which these Christian labourers could scarcely have hoped to escape. In 1815, Mr Bogue received the diploma of Doctor of Divinity, from the Senatus academicus of Vale college, North America, but such was the modesty of his character that he always bore this honour meekly and unwillingly. His zeal for the cause of missions, to which he consecrated his life, continued to the last : he may truly be said to have died in the cause. He annually made tours in different parts of the country in behalf of the Missionary Society ; and it was on a journey of this kind, in which he had been requested to assist at a meeting of the Sussex Auxiliary Society, that he took ill at the house of the Rev. Mr Goulty of Brighton, and, in spite of the best medical advice, departed this life in the morning of the 25th of October, 1825, after a short illness. The effect of this event upon the various churches and religious bodies with which Dr Bogue was connected, was great : no sooner did the intelligence reach Lon- don, than an extraordinary meeting of the Missionary Society was called, (Octo- ber 26,) in which resolutions were passed expressive of its sense of the bereave- ment, and of the benefits which the deceased had conferred upon the society, by the active part he had taken in its projection and establishment, and subsequently " by his prayers, his writings, his example, his journeys, and, above all, by his direction and superintendence of the missionary seminary at Gosport" The only works of any extent for which we are indebted to the pen of Dr Bogue, are, " An Essay on the Divine Authority of the New Testament" " Dis- courses on the Millennium," and a " History of Dissenters," which he undertook in conjunction with- his pupil and friend Dr Bennet. The first of these he commenced at the request of the London 3Iissionary Society, with the purpose of its being appended to an edition of the New Testament, which the society intended ta circulate extensively in France. In consideration of the wide diffusion of infide- lity i'n that country, he wisely directed his attention to the evidence required by this class of individuals addressing them always in the language of kindness and persuasion, " convinced," as he characteristically remarks, " that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God," and if usefulness be taken as a test of excellence, this work is so in a very high degree. No work of a religious character, if we except perhaps the Pilgrim's Progress, has been so popular and so widely circulated: it has been translated into the French, Italian, German, and Spanish languages, and has been widely circulated on the continent of Europe, where, under the divine blessing, it has been eminently useful. In France, in particular, and on the distant shores of America, its influence has been 270 THOMAS BOSTON. felt in the convincing and converting of many to the cause of Christ. It is, in- deed, the most useful of all his works. The discourses on the millennium are entirely practical and devotional, and though they want the strain ing for effort, and the ingenious speculations with which some have clothed this subject, and gained for themselves an ephemeral popularity for to all such trickery Dr Bogue had a thorough aversion they will be found strikingly to display the en- larged views and sterling good sense of their venerable author. BOSTON, THOMAS, an eminent doctrinal writer, was born in the town of Dunse, March 7th, 1676, and received the rudiments of his education at his native town, first under a woman who kept a school in his father's house, and afterwards under Mr James Bullerwill, who taught what is called the grammar school. His father was a nonconformist, and, being imprisoned for his recusancy, retained the subject of this memoir in prison along with him, for the sake of company ; which, notwithstanding his youth, seems to have made a lasting im- pression on the memory of young Boston. Whether the old man was brought at length to conform, we have not been able to learn ; but during his early years, Mr Boston informs us that he was a regular attendant at church, " where he heard those of the episcopal way, that being then the national establishment," He was then, as he informs us, living without God in the world, and uncon- cerned about the state of his soul. Toward the end of summer, 1(>S7, upon the coming out of king James's indulgence, his father carried him to a presbyterian meeting at A\ hitsoine, where he heard the Rev. Mr Henry Erskine, who, before the Restoration, was minister of Comhill, and father to the afterwards celebrated Messrs Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine. It was through the ministrations of this celebrated preiicher, that Boston waj first brought to think seriously about the state of his soul, being then going in the twelfth year of his age. After this he went back no more to the church till the curates were expelled, with whom, it was the general report of the country, no one remained after he became serious and in earnest about the salvation of his soul. While at the grammar school, he formed an intimacy with two boys, Thomas Trotter and Patrick Gillies, who regularly met with him, at stated times, in a chamber of his father's house, for reading the Scriptures, religious conference, and social prayer, " whereby," he says, " they had some advantage, both in point of knowledge and tenderness." Mr Boston made a rapid progress at the school, and before he left it, which was in the harvest of 1689, had gone through all the books commonly taught in such seminaries, and had even begun the Greek, in which language he had read part of John's gospel, Luke, and the Acts of the apostles, though he was then but in his fourteenth year. After leaving the grammar school, two years elapsed before he p r oceeded farther in his studies, his father being doubtful if he was able to defray the expense. This led to several attempts at getting him into a gra- tuitous course at the university, none of which had any success. In the mean time he was partly employed in the composing and transcribing law papers by a Mr Cockburn, a public notary, from which he admits that he derived great benefit in after life. All his plans for a gratuitous academical course having failed, and his father having resolved to strain every nerve to carry him through the classes, he entered the university of Edinburgh as a student of Greek, December 1st, 1691, and studied for three successive sessions. He took out his laureation in the summer of 1694, when his whole expenses for fees and maintenance, were found to amount to one hundred and twenty eight pounds, fifteen shillings and eight pence, Scots money, less than eleven pounds sterling. That same sum- mer he had the bursary of the presbytery of Dunse conferred on him as a student of theology, and in the month of January, 1695, entered the theological class in the college of Edinburgh, then taught by IMr George Campbell, " a THOMAS BOSTON. 271 man," says Boston, "of great learning, but excessively modest, undervaluing himself, and much valuing the tolerable performances of his students. During this session, the only one Boston appears to have regularly attended in divinity, he also for a time attended the Hebrew class, taught by Mr Alexander Rule, but remarks that he found no particular advantage from it. After returning from the university, Mr Boston had different applications made to him, and made various attempts to settle himself in a school, but with no good effect, and in the spring of 1696, he accepted of an invitation from Lady Mersington to superin- tend the education of her grand-child, Andrew Fletcher of Aberlady, a boy oi nine years of age, whose father having died young his mother was married again to lieutenant-colonel Bruce of Kennet, in Clackmannanshire. This he was the rather induced to undertake, because the boy being in Edinburgh at the High School, it gave his preceptor the power of waiting upon the divinity lectures in the college. In less than a month, however, his pupil was taken home to Ken- net, whither Boston accompanied him, and never had another opportunity of attending the college. In this situation Mr Boston continued for about a year, and during that period was pressed, once and again, by the united presbyteries oi Stirling and Dumblane, to take license as a preacher, which, for reasons not very obvious, he declined. In the month of March, 1697, he returned to Dunse, and by his friend Mr Golden, minister of that place, was induced to enter upon trials for license before the united presbyteries of Dunse and Churnside, by which he was licensed as a probationer in the Scottish church, June 15th, 1697. In this character Mr Boston officiated, as opportunity offered, for two years and three months, partly within the bounds of his native presbytery, and partly within the bounds of the presbytery of Stirling. It was first proposed by his friends of the presbytery of Dunse to settle him in the parish of Foulden, the episcopal incum- bent of which was recently dead, and, on the first day he officiated there, he gave a remarkably decisive proof of the firmness of his principles. The episcopal precentor was, under the protection of the great men of the parish, still con- tinued. Boston had no freedom to employ him without suitable acknowledge- ments, which, not being clothed with the ministerial character, he could not take. On the morning, therefore, of the first Sabbath, he told this official, that he would conduct the psalmody himself, which accordingly he did, and there was nothing said about it. In the parish of Foulden, however, he could not be settled without the concurrence of Lord Ross, who had had a great hand in the enormous oppressions of the preceding period. A personal application on the part of the candidate was required by his lordship, and the presbytery were ur- gent with Boston to make it, but to this he could not bring his mind, so the pro- ject came to nothing. He was next proposed for the parish of Abbey ; but this scheme also was frustrated through the deceitfulness of the principal heritor, who was a minister himself, and found means to secure the other heritors, through whose influence he was inducted by the presbytery to the living, though the parishioners were reclaiming, and charging the presbytery with the blood of their souls, if they went on with the settlement. " This," remarks Boston, " was the ungospel-like way of settling, that even then prevailed in the case of planting of churches, a way which I ever abhorred." After these disappointments, Mr Bos- ton removed to his former situation in Clackmannanshire, where he remained for a twelvemonth, and in that time was proposed for Carnock, for Clackmannan, and for Dollar, all of which proposals were fruitless, and he returned to Dunse in the month of May, 1699. Mr Boston had no sooner returned to his native place, than he was proposed by his friend Mr Golden for the parish of Simprin, where, after a great deal of hesitation on his part, and some little chicanery on the part of the presbytery 272 THOMAS BOSTON. and the people, he was ordained minister, September 21, 1699. In Simprin he continued conscientiously performing- the duties of his calling till the year 1707, when, by synodical authority, he was transported to Ettrick. Ills intro- duction to his new charge took place on the 1st of May that year, the very day when the union between Scotland and England took effect; on which ac- count he remarks that he had frequent occasion to remember it, the spirits of the people of Ettrick being imbittered on that event against the ministers of the church, which was an occasion of much heaviness to him, though he had never been for the union, but always against it from the very beginning. Simprin, now united to the parish of Swinton, both of which make a very small parish, contained only a few families, to whose improvement he was able greatly to con- tribute with comparatively little exertion, and the whole population seem to have been warmly attached to him. Ettrick, on the contrary, is a parish extending nearly ten miles in every direction, and required much labour to bring the people together in public, or to come in contact with them at their own house. Several of them, too, were society men or old dissenters, who had never joined the Revolution church from what they supposed to be radical defects in her con- stitution, as well as from much that had all along been offensive in her general administration. Of her constitution, perhaps, Mr Boston was not the warmest admirer, for he has told us in his memoirs, that, .after having studied the subject, of baptism, he had little fondness for national churches, strictly and properly so called, and of many parts of her administration he has again and again expressed decided disapprobation ; but he had an undefined horror at separation, common to the greater part of the presbyterians of that and the preceding generation, which led him to regard almost every other ecclesiastical evil as trifling. Of course, he was shocked beyond measure with the conduct of a few of the families of Ettrick, who chose to adhere to Mr John Macmillan, or Mr John Hepburn, and lias left on record accounts of some interviews with them, shortly after enter- ing upon his charge, which, we have no hesitation in saying, bring not only his candour, but his veracity, very strongly into question, lie was, however, a con- scientious and diligent student, and had already made great progress in the knowledge of the doctrine of grace, which seems to have been but imperfectly understood by many very respectable men of that period. In this he was grcally forwarded by a little book, " The Marrow of Modern Divinity," which he found by accident in the house of one of his parishioners in Simprin, and which had been brought from England by a person who had been a soldier there in the time of the civil wars. Of this book he says, " I found it to come close to the points I was in quest of, and showed the consistency of those which I could not reconcile before, so that I rejoiced in it as a light which the Lord had seasonably struck up to me in my darkness." The works of Jerome Zanchrius, Luther on the Galatians, and Beza's Confession of Faith, which he seems to have fallen in with at the same period, (that is, while he was yet in Simprin, about the year 1700,) also contributed greatly to the same end, niul seems to have given a cast of singularity to his sermons, which was highly relished, and which rendered them singularly useful in promoting the growth of faith arid holiness among his hearers. In 1702, he took the oath of allegiance to queen Anne, the sense of which, he says, he endeavoured to keep on his heart, but never after took an- other oath, whether of a public or private nature. He was a member of the first general assembly held under that queen in the month of March, 1703, of which, as the person that was supposed to be most acceptable to the commissioner, the earl of Seafield, Mr George Meldrum was chosen moderator. The declara- tion of the intrinsic power of the church was the great object of the more fnitb- ful part of her ministers at this time; but they were told by the leading party, THOMAS BOSTON. 273 that they already possessed it, and that to make an act asserting what they pos- sessed, was only to waste time. While this very assembly, however, was in the midst of a discussion upon an overture for preventing the marriage of Pro- testants with papists, the commissioner, rising from his seat, dissolved the assem- bly in her majesty's name. " This having come," Boston remarks, " like a clap of thunder, there were from all corners of the house protestations offered against it, and for asserting the intrinsic power of the church, with which," he adds, " I joined in : but the moderator, otherwise a most grave and composed man, being in as much confusion as a schoolboy when beaten, closed with prayer, and got away together with the clerk, so that nothing was then got marked. This was one of the heaviest days," he continues, " that ever I saw, beholding a vain man tramp- ling under the privileges of Christ's house, and others crouching under the bur- den ; and I could not but observe how Providence rebuked their shifting the act to assert as above said, and baffled their design in the choice of the modera- tor, never a moderator since the revolution to this day, so far as I can guess, having been so ill-treated by a commissioner." This reflection in his private journal, however, with the exception of an inefficient speech in his own synod, ap- pears to be all that ever Boston undertook for the vindication of his church on this occasion. It does not indeed appear that his feelings on this subject were either strong or distinct, as we find himat Ettrick, in the month of January, 1708, declar- ing that he had no scruple in observing a fast appointed by the court, though he thought it a grievance that arose from the union, and the taking away of the privy council. On this occasion he acknowledges that many of his hearers broke off and left him, several of whom never returned, but he justifies himself from the temper of the people, who, had he yielded to them in this, would have dic- tated to him ever afterwards. This same year he was again a member of the General Assembly, where application was made by persons liable to have the abjuration oath imposed upon them for an act declaring the judgment of the Assembly regarding it. The Assembly refused to do any thing in this matter ; which was regretted by Mr Boston, and he states it as a just retribution which brought it to ministers' own doors in 1712, only four years afterwards. On this occasion also he was in the Assembly, but whether as a spectator or a mem- ber he does not say. The lawfulness of the oath was in this Assembly keenly disputed, and Boston failed not to observe that the principles on which the answers to the objections Mere founded were of such latitude, that by them any oath might be made passable. They were indeed neither more nor less than the swearer imposing his own sense upon the words employed, which renders an oath altogether nugatory. In this manner did Principal Carstairs swear it before the justices in Edinbui-gh, to the great amusement of the Jacobites, and being clear for it, he, in the assembly, by his singular policy, smoothed down all asperities, and prevented those who had not the same capacity of conscience from coming to any thing like a rupture with their brethren, for which cause, says Boston, I did always thereafter honour him in my heart! Boston, nevertheless, abhorred the oath, and could not bring his mind to take it, but determined to keep his station in the church, till thrust out of it by the civil authorities. He made over to his eldest son a house in Dunse, which he had inherited from his father, and made an assignation of all his other goods to his servant, John Cur- rie, so that, when the law took effect, he might elude the penalty of five hundred pounds sterling, that was attached to the neglect or the refusal to take the oath within a prescribed period. The memory of the late persecuting reigns was, however, still fresh, and no one appeared willing to incur the odium of imitat- ing them; and, so far as we know, the penalty was never in one single instance i. 2 M 274: THOMAS BOSTON. exacted. The subject of this memoir, at least, was never brought to any real trouble respecting it Amid all 31r Boston's attention to public affairs he was still a most diligent minister; and instead of relaxing any thing of his labours since leaving Sinij>- rin, had greatly increased, them by a habit he had fallen into of writing out his sermons in full, which in the earlier part of his ministry he scarcely ever did. This prepared the way for the publication of his sermons from the press, by which they have been made extensively useful. The first suggestion of this kind seems to have come from his friend Dr Trotter, to whom he paid a visit at Dunse, after assisting at the sacrament at Kelso, in the month of October, 1711; on which occasion the notes of the sermons he had preached on the state of nt:'.n were left with the Doctor for his perusal, and they formed the foundation of that admirable work, the Fourfold State, which was prepared for publication before the summer of 1714, but was laid aside for fear of the Pretender coming in and rendering the sale impossible. In the month of August, the same year, he preached his action sermon from Hosea ii, I'J; which met with so much accep- tance, that he was requested for a copy with a view to publication. 'Ihis he complied with, and in the course of the following winter, it was printed under the title of the Everlasting Espousals, and met with a very good reception, twelve hundred copies being sold in a short time, which paved the way for the publication of the Fourfold State, and was a means of urging him forward in the most important of all his public appearances, that in defence of the Marrow of Modern Divinity. During the insurrection of 1715, he was troubled not a little with the want of military ardour among his parishioners of Ettrick, and, in the year 1717, with an attempt to have him altogether against his inclination transported to the parish of Closeburn, in Dumfries-shire. In the meantime, the Fourfold State had been again and again transcribed, and had been revised by Mr John Flint at Edin- burgh ; and, in 1718, his friends, Messrs Simson, Gabriel Wilson, and Henry Davidson, offered to advance money to defray the expense of its publication. The MS., however, was sent at last to Mr Robert \Vightman, treasurer to the city of Edinburgh, who ultimately became the prefacer and the publisher of the book, with many of his own emendations, in consequence of which there Mas a necessity for cancelling a number of sheets and reprinting them, before the author could allow it to come to the public ; nor was it thoroughly purged till it came to a second edition. The first came out in 1720. The oath of abjuration, altered, in a small degree, at the petition of the greater part of the presbyterian nonjurors, was again imposed upon ministers in the year 1719, when the most of the ministers took it, to the great grief of many of their people, and to the additional persecution of the few who still wanted free- dom to take it, of which number Mr Boston still continued to be one. Mr Bos- ton Mas at this time employed by the synod to examine some overtures from the assembly regarding discipline ; and having been, from his entrance on the min- istry, dissatisfied Mith the manner of admitting to the Lord's table, and planting vacant churches, he set himself to have these matters rectified, by remarks upon, and enlargements of these customs. The synod did not, hoMever, even so much as call for them, and, though they Mere by the presbytery laid before the com- mission, they were never taken into consideration. " And I apprehend," says Boston, " that the malady Mill be incurable till the present constitution be vio- lently thrown down.'' ITiotigh the judicatures M'ere thus careless of any im- provement in discipline, they were not less so M - ith regard to doctrine. The Assembly, in 1717, had dismissed professor Simson without censure, though he had gone far into the regions of error; and they condemned the whole presby- THOMAS BOSTON. 275 tery of Auchterardcr, for denying that any pre-requisite qualification was necessary on tlie part of the sinner for coming to Christ; and this year, 1719, they, at the instigation of Principal Haddow of St Andrews, commenced a prosecution against Mr James Hog of Carnock, who had published an edition of the Marrow, Alex- ander Hamilton minister of Airth, James Brisbane minister at Stirling, and John Warden minister at Gargunnock, who had advocated its principles: which ended in an act of the General Assembly forbidding all under their inspection in time coming to teach or preach any such doctrines. This act of Assembly was by- Boston and his friends brought before the pi-esbytery of Selkirk, who laid it before the synod of Merse and Teviotdale. Nothing to any purpose was done in the synod ; but the publicity of the proceedings led to a correspondence with Mr James Hog, Mr Ralph Erskine, and others, by whom a representation and peti- tion was given into the Assembly, 1721. This representation, however, was referred to the commission. When called before the commission, on Thuisday, May 1 8, Mr Hog not being ready, and Mr Bonar of Torphichen gone home, Mr Boston had the honour of appearing first in that cause. On that day they were borne down by universal clamour. Next day, however, Principal Had- dow was hardly pushed in argument by Mr Boston, and Logan of Culcross was completely silenced by Mr Williamson of Inveresk. The commission then gave out to the twelve representing brethren twelve queries, to which they were required to return answers against the month of March next These answers, luminous and brief beyond any thing of the kind in our language, were begun by Mr Ebenezer Erskine, but greatly extended and improved by Mr Gabriel Wilson of Maxton. For presuming thus to question the acts of Assembly, the whole number were admonished and rebuked. Against this sentence they gave in a protestation, on which they took instruments in due form; but it was not allowed to be read. In the meantime, Mr Boston prepared an edition of the Marrow, illustrated by copious notes, which was published in 1726, and has ever since been well known to the religious public. The Assembly, ashamed, after all, of the act complained of, remodelled it in such a way as to abate some- what its grossness, though, in the process, it lost little of its venom. Following out his plan of illustrating gospel truth, Boston preached to his peo- ple a course of sermons on the covenants of works and of grace, which have long been in the hands of the public, and duly prized by judicious readers. His last appearance in the General Assembly was in the year 1729, in the case of Pro- fessor Simson, where he dissented from the sentence of the Assembly as being no just testimony of the church's indignation against the dishonour done by the said Mr Simson to our glorious Redeemer, the Great God and our Saviour, nor agree- able to the rule of God's word in such cases, nor a fit means to bring the said Mr Simson himself to repentance, of which, he added, he had yet given no evi- dence. This dissent, however, for the sake of the peace of the church, which some said it m ight endanger, he did not insist to have recorded on the Assembly's books. His last public work was a letter to the presbytery, which met at Sel- kirk, May 2, 1732, respecting the overture for settling vacant parishes ; which breathes all the ardour and piety of his more early productions, and in vhich he deprecates the turning of that overture into a standing law, as what cannot fail to be the ruin of the church, and he prays that his letter may be recorded as a testimony against it. His health had been for a number of years declining ; he was now greatly emaciated ; and he died on the twentieth of May, 1732, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Mr Boston was married shortly after his settlement at Simprin to Katharine Brown, a worthy pious woman, by whom he had ten children, four of whom only survived him. Thomas, the youngest, was ordained to the pastoral care of the parish of Oxnam ; but removing thence to Jedburgh 276 JAMES BOSWELL. without a presentation from the patron, or the leave of his presbytery, became one of the fathers of the Relief church. Of the fortunes of his other children we have not been informed. Of the character of Boston thei'e can be but one opinion. Ardent and pious, his whole life was devoted to the promoting' of the glory of God and the best interests of his fellow-men. As an author, though he has been lowered by the publication of too many posthumous works, lie must yet be admitted to stand in the first class. Even the most incorrect of his pieces betray the marks of a highly original and powerfid mind, and his Fourfold State of Man cannot fail to be read and admired so long as the faith of the gospel continues to be taught and learned in the language in which it is written. 1 BOSWELL, JAMES, the friend aiid biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson, was born at Edinburgh, October 2U, 1740. The Boswells, or Bosvilles, are supposed to have " come in with the Con- queror," and to have migrated to Scotland in the reign of David I. [1124-53], The first man of the family, ascertained by genealogists, was Robert Boseville, who figured at the court of William the Lion, and became proprietor of some lands in Berwickshire. Roger de Boswell, sixth in descent from tbjs person, lived in the reign of David II., and acquired lands in Fife. His descendant, Sir John Boswell, who flourished in the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century, acquired the lands of Balmuto in Fife, which was after- wards the principal title of the family. David Boswell of Balmuto, the eleventh representative of the family in succession, had, besides his heir, Alexander, who succeeded to the family estates, a son named Thomas, who became a servant of James IV., and was gifted by that monarch with the Lands of Auclunleck, in Ayrshire, which were then in the crown by recognition. 2 The charters, one of which is dated in 1504, the other in 1505, bear that the lands were granted, " pro bono et gratuito servitio nobis per dilectum nostrum familiarem Thomam Boswell impensis," and " pro bono servitio, et pro singular! favore quern erga ipsum Thomam gerimus." The lands of Auchinleck had previously belonged to a family of the same name. Thomas Boswell, first of Auchinleck, married a daughter of Sir Hugh Campbell of Loudoun ; and fell bravely fighting with his master at Flodden. The estimation and quality of his descendants may be exemplified by the dignity of the families into which they married in succession. The following are the fathers of their respective brides: James Earl of Arran, 1 Mr Boston's name is still held in great reverence by the people of the south of Scotland. The editor of this work well recollects two questions which, in bis jouth, used to pass among the boys at a town not far from Ettrick "who was the best, and who the worst man that ever lived?'' their minds evidently reflecting only upon modern times. The answer to the first query gave, "Mr Boston, the minister of I'.ttrick :" the wortt man, I regret to say, was the Earl of March, father of the last Duke of Queensberry, whose fame, it may be guessed, was purely local. * Thomas Boswell is frequently mentioned in the Treasurer's books under the reign of James IV. On the 15th May, 1604, is an entry, " Item, to Thomas Boswell, he laid downe in I,eith to the wife of the kingis innis, and to 'the boy rane the kingis hors, 18.'' On the 2nd August, is the following: * Item, for twa hidis to be jakkis to Thomas Bosrrell and Watte Trumbull, agane the Raid of Eskdale, [an expedition against the border thieves,] 66i." On the 1st of January, 1504-5, " Item, to Thomas Hoswell and Pate Sinclair to by thaim daunsing geir, 28*." Under December 31st, 1505, " Item, to 30 dosane of bellis for dansaris, delyverit to Thunuis Bonuelt, 4/. 10s." Mr Pitcainie, from whose valuable " Collection of Criminal Trials" these extracts are made, seems to think that Thomas Bos- well was a minstrel to King James : it is perhaps as probable that he was chief of the royal train of James. If such he really was nd if the biographer of Johnson had been aware (if the fact, he would have perhaps considered it a reason for moderating a little his family pride though we certainly must confess that there is not altogether wauling some analogy between the professions of Laird Thomas and Laird James. Fl (1 Ik It. i OF AUCHINLECK. JAMES BOSWELL; 277 who uurried the Princess Mary, daughter of king James II., and was ancestor of the Hamilton family ; Sir Robert Dalzell of Glenae, ancestor of the Earls of Carmvath [the same gentleman had for his second wife, a daughter of Lord Ochiltree ;] Crawford of Kerse ; Sir John Wallace of (Jairnhill [2nd wife, a daughter of Sir Archibald Stewart of Blackball ] ; Cunningham of Glengarnock ; Hamilton of Dalzell ; Earl of Kincardine ; Colonel John Erskine, grandson of the lord treasurer Earl of Mar. James Boswell was the eldest son of Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, and of Euphemia Erskine. 1 The father was an advocate in good practice at the Scot- tish har; who was, in 1751, elevated to the bench, taking, on that occasion, the designation of Lord Auchinleck. James Boswell, father of Lord Auchinleck, had also been a Scottish barrister, and, as we learn from Lord Kames, on of the best of his time ; his wife was a daughter of Alexander Bruce, second Earl of Kincardine, whose mother was Veronica, a daughter of the noble house of Sommelsdyk in Holland. For an account of Auchinleck, reference may be made to Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands. The father of the biographer was a stern and rigid presbyterian, and a zeal- ous supporter of the Hqpse of Hanover : young Boswell, on the contrary, from his earliest years, showed a disposition favourable to the high church and the family of Stuart. Dr Johnson used to tell the following story of his biographer's early years, which Boswell has confessed to be literally true. " In 1745, Bos- well was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James, till one of his uncles (General Cochran) gave him a shilling, on condition that he would pray for King George, which he accordingly did." "So you see, "adds Bos- well, who has himself preserved the anecdote, " whigs of all ages are made in the same way." He received the rudiments of his education at the school of Mr James Mun- dell, in Edinburgh, a teacher of considerable reputation, who gave elemental instruction to many distinguished men. He afterwards went through a complete academical course at the college of Edinburgh, where he formed an intimacy with Mr Temple of Allardeen in Northumberland, afterwards vicar of St Gluvies in Cornwall, and known in literary history for a well- written character of Gray, which has been adopted both by Dr Johnson and 31ason in their memoirs of that poet Mr Temple and several other young English gentlemen were fellow-stu- dents of Boswell, and it is supposed that his intercourse with them was the ori- ginal and principal cause of that remarkable predilection for English society and manners, which characterized him through life. Boswell very early began to show a taste for literary composition ; in which lie was encouraged by Lord Somerville, of whose flattering kindness he ever preserved a grateful recollection. His lively and sociable disposition, and pas- sion for distinguishing himself as a young man of parts and vivacity, also led him, at a very early period of life, into the society of the actors in the theatre, with one of whom, Mr David Ross, he maintained a friendship till the death of that individual, in 1791, when Boswell attended as one of the mourners at his funeral. While still at college, Lady Houston, sister of Lord Cathcart, put under his care a comedy, entitled, " The Coquettes, or the Gallant in the Clo- set," with a strict injunction that its author should be concealed. Boswell exerted his interest among the players to get this piece brought out upon the stage, and made himself further conspicuous by writing the prologue, which was spoken by Mr Parsons. It was condemned at the third performance, and not unjustly, for it was found to be chiefly a bad translation of one of the worst plays 1 He had two brothers; John, a lieutenant in the army ; David, a merchant at Valencia In Spain. 276 JAMES BOSWELL. of Corneille. Such, however, was the fidelity of Boswell. that, though universally believed to be the author, and consequently laughed at in the most unmerciful manner, he never divulged the name of the fair writer, nor was it known till she made the discovery herself. After studying civil law for some time at Edinburgh, Boswell went for one Vii nter to pursue the same study at Glasgow, where he, at the same time, attended the lectures of Dr Adam Smith on moral philosophy and rhetoric. Here he con- tinued, as at Edinburgh, to adopt his companions chiefly from the class of Eng- lish students attending the university; one of whom, Mr Francis Gentleman, on publishing an altered edition of Southern's tragedy of Oroonoko, inscribed it to Bosvrell, in a poetical epistle, which concludes thus, in the person of his IVIuse : " But where, with honest pleasure, she can find, Sense, taste, religion, and good nature joined, There gladly will she raise her feeble voice, Nor fear to tell that BOSWELL is her choice." Inspired, by reading and conversation, with an almost enthusiastic notion of London life, Boswell paid his first visit to that metropolis in 1760, and his ardent expectations were not disappointed. The society, amusements, and general style of life which he found in the modern Bab) Ion, and to which lie was introduced by the poet Derrick, were suited exactly to his taste and temper. He had already given some specimens of a talent for writing occasional essays and poetical jeux d'esprit, in periodical works, and he therefore appeared before the wits of the metropolis as entitled to some degree of attention, lie was chiefly indebted, however, for their friendship, to Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune, one of the most amiable and accomplished noblemen of his time, who, being of the same county, and from his earliest years acquainted with the family of Auchinleck, insisted that young Boswell should have an apartment in his house, and introduced him, as Boswell himself used to say, " into the circle of the great, the gay, and the ingenious.'' Lord Eglintoune carried his young friend along with him to Newmarket ; an adventure which seems to have made a strong impression on Boswell's imagination, as he celebrated it in a poem called " the Cub at Newmarket," which was published by Dodsley, in 1762, in 4to. The cub was himself, as appears from the following extract : " Lord Eglintoune, who loves, you know, A little dash of whim or so, By chance a curious cub had got, On Scoija's mountains newly caught. 1 ' In such terms was Boswell content to speak of himself in print, even at this early period of life, and, what adds to the absurdity of the whole affair, he could not rest till he had read " the Cub at Newmarket " in manuscript to Edward Uuke of York, and obtained permission from his royal highness to dedicate it to him. It was the wish of Lord Auchinleck that his son should apply himself to the law, a profession to which two generations of the family had now been devoted, and in which Lord Auchinleck thought that his own eminent situation would be of advantage to the success of a third. Boswell himself, though, in obedience to his father's desire, he had studied civil law at the colleges of Edinburgh and Glasgow, was exceedingly unwilling to consign himself to the studious life of a barrister at Edinburgh, where at this time the general tone of society was the very reverse of his own temperament, being (if we are to believe Provost Creech) characterized by a degree of puritanical reserve and decorum, not much removed from the rigid observances of the preceding century, while only a very small circle of men of wit and fashion an oasis in the dreary waste carried on a JAMES BOSWELL. 279 clandestine existence, under the ban, as it were, of the rest of the world. Bos- well had already cast his eyes upon the situation of an officer in the foot-guards, as calculated to afford him that indulgence in London society, which he so much desired, while it was, at the same time, not incompatible with his prospects as a Scottish country gentleman. It was with some difficulty that his father prevailed upon him to return to Scotland, and consult about the choice of a profession. The old judge even took the trouble to put his son through a regular course of instruction in the law, in the hope of inspiring him with an attachment to it But though he was brought the length of standing his trials as a civilian before a committee of the Faculty, he could not be prevailed upon to enter heartily into his father's views. During part of the years 1761 and 176-2, while confined to Edinburgh, and to this partial and unwilling study of the law, he contrived to alleviate the irk- someness of his situation by cultivating the society of the illustrious men who now cast a kind of glory over Scotland and Scotsmen. Kames, Blair, Robertson, Hume, and Dalrymple, though greatly his seniors, were pleased to honour him with their friendship ; more, perhaps, on account of his worthy and dignified parent, than on his own. He also amused himself at this time in contributing jeux d'esprit to " a Collection of Original Poems by Scottish Gentlemen,'' of which two volumes were successively published by Alexander Donaldson, an enterprising bookseller ; being an imitation of the " Miscellanies " of Dodsley. Several of the pieces in this collection were noticed very favourably in the Critical Review ; and the whole is now valuable as a record of Scottish manners at a particular era. Bos- well's pieces were distinguished only by his initials. In one, he characte rises himself, saying, as to la belle passion, Boswell does women adore. And never once means to deceive ; He's in love with at least half a score, If they're serious, he laughs in his sleeve. With regard to a more prominent trait of his character, he adds Boswell is modest enough, Himself not quite Phoebus he thinks, * * * * He has all the bright fancy of youth, With the judgment of forty and five ; In short to declare the plain truth, There is no better fellow alive ! At this tima, he cultivated a particular intimacy with the Hon. Andrew Ers- kine, a younger brother of the nvisical Earl of Kelly, and who might be said to possess wit by inheritance, his father being remarkable for this property, (though not for good sense,) while his mother was the daughter of Dr Pitcairne. Ers- kine and Boswell were, in frivolity, Arcades ambo ; or rather there seemed to be a competition betwixt them, which should exhibit the greater share of that quality. A correspondence, in which this contest seems to be carried on, was published in 1763, and, as there was no attempt to conceal names, the two let- ter-writers must have been regarded, in that dull and decorous age, as little bet- ter than fools fools for writing in such a strain at all, but doubly fools for laying their folly in such an unperishable shape before the world. At the end of the year, 1762, Boswell, still retaining his wish to enter the guards, repaired once more to London, to endeavour to obtain a commission. For this purpose he carried recommendations to Charles Duke of Queensberry the amiable patron of Gay who, he believed, was able to obtain for him what 280 JAMES BOSWEI.L. lie wished. Owing, however, ( as is understood,) to the backwardness of Loixl Aucliinleck to enforce his claims, his patrons put him off from time to time, till he was again obliged to return to Scotland. At length, in the spring of 1763, a compromise was made between the father and his son, the latter agreeing to relinquish his favourite project, and resume the study of the civil law for one winter at Utrecht, with the view of ultimately entering the legal profession, on the condition that, after the completion of his studies, he should be permitted to make what was then called " the grand tour." Bos well set out for this purpose early in 1763 ; and, according to the recol- lection of an ancient inhabitant of Glasgow, his appearance, in riding through that city, on his way from Aucliinleck, was as follows : " A cocked hat, a brown wig, brown coat, made in the court fashion, red vest, corduroy small clothes, and long military-looking boots. He was on horseback, with his servant at a most aristocratic distance behind, and presented a fine specimen of the Scottish coun- try gentleman of that day." Edin. Lit. Jour, ii, 327. In Boswell's previous visits to London, lie had never had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Dr Samuel Johnson. He had now that pleasure. On the 16th of 3Iay, as he himself takes care to inform us, while sitting in the back- shop of Thomas Davies, the bookseller, No. 8, Russell-street, Covent Garden, Johnson came in, and Boswell was introduced, by Davies, as a young gentleman " from Scotland." Owing to the antipathy of the lexicographer to that country, his conversation with Boswell was not at first of so cordial a description as at all to predicate the remarkable friendship they afterwards formed. Boswell, how- ever, by the vivacity of his conversation, soon beguiled the doctor of his preju- dices ; and their intimacy was confirmed by a visit which he soon after paid to Johnson at his apartments in the Temple. During the few months which Bos- well spent in town before setting out for Utrecht, he applied himself assidu- ously to cultivate this friendship, taking apartments in the Temple in order that he might be the oftener in the company of the great man. Even at this early period, he began that practice of noting down the conversation of Johnson, which eventually enabled him to compose such a splendid monument to their common memory. He set out for Utrecht* in August 1763, and, after studying for the winter under the celebrated civilian Trotz, proceeded, according to the compact with his father, upon the tour of Europe. In company with the Earl 3Iarischal, whose acquaintance he had formed, he travelled through Switzerland and Ger- many, visiting Voltaire at Ferney, and Rousseau in the wilds of Neufchatel ; men whom his regard for the principles of religion might have taught him to avoid, if his itch for the acquaintance of noted characters one of the most remarkable features of his character had not forced him into their presence. He afterwards crossed the Alps, and spent some time in visiting the principal cities in Italy. Here he formed an acquaintance with Lord Mountstuart, the eldest son of the Earl of Bute ; to whom he afterwards Dedicated his law thesis on being admitted to the bar. At this time, the inhabitants of the small island of Corsica were engaged in their famous struggle for liberty, against the Genoese, and Pasquale de Paoli, their heroic leader, was, for the time, one of the most noted men in Europe. Boswell, struck by an irrepressible curiosity regarding this person, sailed to Cor- sica, in autumn 1765, and introduced himself to Paoli at his palace, by means of a letter from Rousseau. He was received with much distinction and kindness, and noted down a good deal of the very striking conversation of the Corsicnn chief. After a residence of some weeks in the island, during which he made himself acquainted with all its natural and moral features, he returned through France, and arrived in London, February 1766, his journey being hastened by intelligence of the death of his mother. Dr Johnson received him, as he passed through London, with renewed kindness and friendship. Boswell now returned to Scotland, and, agreeably to the treaty formed with Lord Auchinleck, entered (July 25, 1766) as a member of the faculty of advo- cates. His temper, however, was still too volatile for the studious pursuit of the law. and he did not make that progress in his profession, which might have been expected from the numerous advantages witli which he commenced. The Douglas cause was at this time pending, and Boswell, who was a warm partizan of the young claimant, published (November 1767) a pamphlet, entitled, "The Essence of the Douglas Cause," in answer to one, entitled " Considerations on the Douglas Cause," in which a strenuous effort had been made to prove the claimant an impostor. It is said that Mr Bos well's exertions on this occasion were of material service in exciting a popular prepossession in favour of the doubtful heir. This, however, was the most remarkable appearance made by Mr Boswell, as a lawyer, if it can be called so. His Corsican tour, and the friendship of Paoli, had made a deep impression on Boswell's mind. He conceived that he had seen and made himself acquainted with what had been seen and known by few ; and he was perpetually talking of the islanders and their chief! This mania, which was rather, perhaps, to be at- tributed to his vain desire of showing himself off in connection with a subject of popular talk, than any appreciation of the noole character of the Corsican struggle, at length obtained him the nick-name of Paoli, or Paoli Boswell. Resolving that the world at large should participate in what he knew of Corsica, he published, in the spring of 1768, his account of that island, which was printed in iSvo by the celebrated brothers, Foulis, at Glasgow, and ' was well re- ceived. The sketches of the island and its inhabitants, are lively and amusing ; and his memoir of Paoli, which follows the account of the island, is a spirited narrative of patriotic deeds and sufferings. The work was translated into the Ger- man, Dutch, French, and Italian languages, and every where infected its readers with its own enthusiastic feeling in behalf of the oppressed islanders. Dr John- son thus expressed himself regarding it: "Your journal is curious and delight- ful ; I know not whether I could name any narrative by which curiosity is better excited or better gratified." On the other hand, Johnson joined the rest of the world in thinking that the author indulged too much personally in his enthusiasm upon the subject, and advised him, in a letter, dated March 23, 1768, to "empty his head of Corsica," Boswell was so vain of his book, as to pay a visit to London, in the spring court vacation, chiefly for the purpose of seeking Dr Johnson's approbation more at large. In the following winter, a patent was obtained, for the first time, by Ross, the manager of the Edinburgh theatre ; but, nevertheless, a violent opposition was still maintained against this public amusement by the more rigid portion of the citizens. Ross, being anxious to appease his enemies, solicited Boswell to write a prologue for the opening of the house, which request was readily com- plied with. The verses were, as Lord 3Iansfield characterised them, witty and conciliating; and their effect, being aided by friends properly placed in differ- ent parts of the house, was instantaneous and most triumphant ; the tide of op- position was turned, the loudest plaudits were given, and Ross at once entered upon a very prosperous career. In 176'J, Boswell paid a visit to Ireland, where he spent six or seven weeks, chiefly at Dublin, and enjoyed the society of Lord Charlemont, Dr Leland, Mr Flood, Dr Macbride, and other eminent persons of that kingdom, not forgetting the celebrated George Falconer, the friend of Swift and Chesterfield. Viscount, 282 JAMES BOSNVELL. afterwards 31arquis Townshend, was then Lord Lieutenant, and the congeniality of their dispositions united them in the closest friendship. He enjojed a great advantage in the union of one of his female cousins to Mr Sibthorpe, of the county of Down, a gentleman of high influence, who was the means of introduc- ing him into much good society. Another female cousin, Miss -Margaret 31ont- gomery, daughter of Mr Montgomery of Lainshaw, accompanied him on the expedition ; and not only added to his satisfaction by her own delightful company, but caused him to be received with much kindness by her numerous and respecta- ble relations. This jaunt was the means of converting Boswell from a resolu- tion, which he appears to have formed, to live a single life. He experienced so much pleasure from the conversation of Miss Montgomery, that he Mas tempted to seek her society for life in a matrimonial engagement. He had resolved, he said, never to marry had always protested, at least, that a large fortune would be in- dispensable. He was now, however, impressed with so high an opinion of her particular merit, that he would wave that consideration altogether, provided she would wave his faults also, and accept him for better for worse. 31iss 31ontgomery, who was really an eligible match, being related to the noble family of Eglin- toune, while her father laid claim to the dormant peerage of Lyle, acceded to his proposal with corresponding frankness; and it was determined that they should be married at the end of the year, after he should have paid one parting visit to London. Before tin's visit was paid, Mr Boswell was gratified in the highest degree, by the arrival of General Faoli, who, having been forced to abandon his native island, in consequence of the French invasion, had sought that refuge on the shores of Britain, which has never yet been refused to the unfortunate of any country. In autumn, 1769, General Paoli visited Scotland and Boswell; an account of his progress through the country, with Boswell in his train, is given in the Scots Magazine of the time. Both on this occasion, and on his subsequent visit to London, Boswell attended the exiled patriot with an ob- sequious fidelity, arising no doubt as much from his desire of appearing in the company of a noted character, as from gratitude for former favours of a similar kind. Among other persons to whom he introduced his Corsican friend, was Ur Johnson ; an entirely opposite being, in destiny and character, but who, never- theless, was at some pains to converse with the unfortunate stranger Boswell acting as interpreter. It would be curious to know in what light Paoli, who HJIS a high-minded man, beheld his eccentric cicerone. During the tune of his visit to London, September, 1709, the jubilee took place at Stratford, to celebrate the birth of Shakspeare. As nearly all the lite- rary, and many of the fashionable persons of the day were collected at this solemnity, Boswell entered into it with a great deal of spirit, and played, it is said, many fantastic tricks, more suited to a carnival scene on the continent, than to a sober festival in England. To pursue a contemporary account, " One of the most remarkable masks upon this occasion was James Boswell, Esq. in the dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre about 12 o'clock. He wore a short, dark-coloured coat of coarse cloth, scarlet waist- coat and breeches, and black spatterdashes ; his cap or bonnet was of black cloth ; on the front of it was embroidered in gold letters, Viva la Liberia ; and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant as well as a warlike appearance. On the breast of his coat was sewed a Moor's head, the crest of Corsica, surrounded with branches of laurel. He had also a cartridge-pouch, into which was stuck a stiletto, and on his left side a pistol was hung upon the belt of his cartridge-pouch. He had a fusee slung across his shoulder, wore no powder in his hair / but had it plaited at lull JAMES BOSWELL. 283 length, with a knot of blue ribbons at the end of it He had, by way of staff, a very curious vine all of one piece, with a bird finely carved upon it, emblema- tical of the sweet bard of Avon. He wore no mask ; saying, that it was not pro- per for a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room, he drew univer- sal attention. The novelty of the Corsican dress, its becoming appearance, and the character of that brave nation, concurred to distinguish the armed Corsican chief. He was first accosted by Mrs Garrick, with whom he had a good deal of conversation. Mr Boswell danced both a minuet and a country dance with a very pretty Irish lady, Mrs Sheldon, wife to captain Sheldon of the 38th regi- ment of foot, who was dressed in a genteel domino, and before she danced, threw o'Fher mask." London Magazine, September, 1769, where there is a portrait of the modern Xenophon in this strange guise. 1 On the 25th of November, he was married, at Lainshaw, in Ayrshire, to Miss Montgomery, 2 and what is rather a remarkable circumstance, his father was mar- ried on the same day, at Edinburgh, to a. second wife. With admirable sense, affection, and generosity of heart, the wife of James Boswell possessed no com- mon share of wit and pleasantly. One of her bon mots is recorded by her hus- band. Thinking that Johnson had too much influence over him, she said, with some warmth, " I have seen many a bear led by a man, but I never before saw a man led by a bear." Once, when Boswell was mounted upon a horse which he had brought pretty low by riding the country for an election, and was boasting that he was a horse of blood, " I hope so," said she, drily, " for I am sure he has no flesh." Her good-humoured husband kept a collection of her good things, un- der the title of Uxoriana. Perhaps her best property was her discretion as a housewife and a mother ; a quality much needed on her side of the house, since it was so deficient on that of her husband. In a letter from Auchinleck, 23d August, 1773, Dr Johnson thus speaks of her: "Mrs Boswell has the mien and manner of a gentlewoman, and such a person and manner as could not in any place be either admired or condemned. She is in a proper degree inferior to 1 Mr Croker has mentioned, in his edition of the life of Johnson, that on this occasion he had the words " CORSICA BOSWELL" in a scroll of gilt letters round his hat. But perhaps the above account somewhat invalidates the statement. Boswell, however, is known to have been ambitious of some such prenomen as CORSICA, from an idea he entertained, that every man, aiming at distinction, should be known by a soubriquet, derived from the thing or place by which he had gained celebrity. He seems to have adopted this fancy from the Roman fashion, of which Sci/iio Africanus is an instance. Thus, he encouraged a proposal for call- ing Johnson by the epithet DICTIONARY JOHNSON. 2 It has been already mentioned, that Boswell's courtship took place, or at least com- menced in Ireland. I cannot help thinking that the following composition, published in his name by his son, must have had a reference to this transaction. It is stated by Sir Alexander to have been written to an Irish air : O Larghan Clanbrassil, how sweet is thy sound ! To my tender remembrance as Love's sacred ground ; For there Marg'ret Caroline first charm'd my sight, And fill'd my young heart with a flutt'ring delight. When I thought her my own, ah ! too short seem'd the day For a jaunt to Downpatrick, or a trip on the sea; To express what I felt then, all language were vain, 'Twas in truth what the poets have studied to feign. But, too late, I found even she could deceive, And nothing was left but to sigh, weep, and rave; Distracted, I flew from mv dear native shore, Resolved to see Larghan Clanbrassil no more. Yet still in some moments enchanted I find A ray of her fondness beams soft on my mind ; While thus in bless'd fancy my angel 1 see, All the world is a Larghan Cianbrassil to me. 284 JAMES BOSXVELL. her husband ; she cannot rival him, nor can he ever be ashamed of her." She died in June, 1789, leaving two sons, Alexander and James, and three daugh- ters, Veronica, Euphemia, and Elizabeth. For two or three years after his marriage, Boswell appears to have lived a quiet professional life at Edinburgh, paying only short occasional visits to Lor- don. In autumn, 1773, Dr Johnson gratified him by coming to Edinburgh, and proceeding in his company on a tour through the north of Scotland and the Western Islands. On this occasion, Boswell kept a journal, as usual, of every remarkable part of Dr Johnson's conversation. The journey being made rather late in the season, the two travellers encountered some hardships, and a few dangers; but they were highly pleased with what they saw, and the reception they every where met with; Boswell, for his own part, declaring that he would not have missed the acquisition of so many new and delightful ideas as he had gained by this means, for five hundred pounds. Dr Johnson published an ac- count of their trip, and the observations he made during its progress, under the title of a "Journey to the Western Islands;" and Boswell, after the death of his friend, (1785), gave to the world the journal he had kept, as a " Tour to the Hebrides," 1 volume 8vo. The latter is perhaps one of the most entertaining works in the language, though only rendered so, we must acknowledge, at the expense of the author's dignity. It ran through three editions during the first twelvemonth, and has since been occasionally reprinted. For many years after the journey to the Hebrides, Boswell only enjnyed such snatches of Johnson's company and conversation, as he could obtain by occa- sional visits to London, during the vacations of the Court of Session. Of these interviews, however, he has preserved such ample and interesting records, as must make us regret that he did not live entirely in London. It appears that, during the whole period of his acquaintance with Johnson, he pr.id only a dozen visits to London, and spent with him only a hundred and eighty days in all; which, added to the time which they spent in their northern journey between August 1 8th and November 23d, 1773, makes the whole period during which the biographer enjoyed any intercourse with his subject, only two hundred and seventy-six days, or one hundredth part of Johnson's life. The strangely vain and eccentric conduct of Boswell had, long ere this period, rendered him almost as notable a character as any of those whom he was so anxious to see. His social and good-humoured character gained him universal friendship; but this friendship was never attended with perfect respect. 3Ien of inferior qualifications despised the want of natural dignity, which made him go about in attendance upon every great man, and from no higher object in life than that of being the commemorator of their conversations. It is lain ntable to state that, among those who despised him, was his own father ; and even other relations, from whom respect might have been more imperatively required, were fretted by his odd habits. " Old Lord Auchinleck," says Sir Walter Scott, " was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient family, and, moreover, he was a strict presbyterian and whig of the old Scottish cast." To this character, his son presented a perfect contrast a light-headed lawyer, an aristocrat only in theory, an episcopalian, and a tory. But it was chiefly with the unsettled and undignified conduct of his son, that the old gentleman found fault. " There's nae hope for Jamie, man," he said to a friend about the time of the journey to the Hebrides; " Jamie's gane clean gyte : What do ye think, man? he's atVwi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican ; and whase tail do ye think he lias pinned himself to now, man ?" Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. " A dominie, man, (meaning Johnson) JAMES BOSWELL. 285 an auld dominie, that keepit a schule, and ca'd it an academy!" By the death of Lord Anchinleck, in 1782, Boswell was at length freed from what he had always felt to be a most painful restraint, and at the same time became possessed of his paternal estate Boswell's mode of life, his social indulgences, and his frequent desertion of business for the sake of London literary society, tended greatly to embarrass his circumstances ; and he was induced to try if they could be repaired by exer- tions in the world of politics. In 1784, when the people were in a state oi most alarming excitement in consequence of Mr Fox's India Bill, and the eleva- tion of Mr Pitt, he wrote a pamphlet, entitled, " A Letter to the People of Scot- land, on the Present State of the Nation." Of this work Dr Johnson has thus pronounced his approbation : " I am very much of your opinion, and, like you, feel great indignation at the style in which the King is every day treated. Your paper contains very considerable knowledge of history and of the constitution, very properly produced and applied." The author endeavoured, by means of this pamphlet, to obtain the favourable notice of Mr Pitt ; but we are informed that, though the youthful minister honoured the work with his approbation, both on this occasion, and on several others, his efforts to procure an introduction to political life were attended with a mortifying want of success. He was, never- theless, induced to appear once more as a pamphleteer in 1785, when he pub- lished a second " Letter to the People of Scotland," though upon an humbler theme, namely, " on the alarming attempt to infringe the articles of Union, and introducing a most pernicious innovation, by diminishing the numbers of the Lords of Session." This proposal had been brought forward in the House of Commons ; the salaries of the judges were to be raised, and, that the expense might not fall upon the country, their number was to be reduced to ten. Boswell (to use a modern phrase) immediately commenced a vehement agitation in Scotland, to oppose the bill ; and among other measures which he took for exciting public attention, published this letter. His chief argument was, that the number of the judges was established immutably by the act of union ; an act which entered into the very constitution of parliament itself, and how then could parliament touch it ? He also showed that the number of fifteen, which Buchanan had pronounced too small to form a free or liberal institution, was little enough to avoid the character of a tyrannical junto. He further argued the case in the following absurd, but characteristic terms : " Is a court of ten the same with a court of fifteen? Is a two-legged animal the same with a four-legged animal? I know nobody who will gravely defend that proposition, except one grotesque philosopher, whom ludicrous fable represents as going about avowing his hunger, and wagging his tail, fain to become cannibal, and eat his deceased brethren." The agitation prevailed, and the court remained as it had been, for another generation. Boswell, whose practice at the Scottish bar w r as never very great, had long wished to remove to the English, in order that he might live entirely in London. His father's reluctance, however, had hitherto prevented him. Now that the old gentleman was dead, he found it possible to follow his inclination, and accord- ingly he began, from time to time, to keep his terms at the Inner Temple. His resolution was thus sanctioned by a letter to him from Dr Johnson, which exhibits at once a cautious and encouraging view of the mode of life he proposed to enter upon : " I remember, and entreat you to remember, that virtus est vitium fugere ; the first approach to riches is security from poverty. The condition upon which you have my consent to settle in London, is that your expense never exceeds your annual income. Fixing this basis of security, you cannot be hurt, and 286 JAMES BOSWELL. you may be Tery much advanced. The loss of your Scottish business, which is all you can lose, is not to be reckoned any equivalent to the hopes and possi- bilities that open here upon you. If you succeed, the question of prudence is at an end ; any body will think that done right which ends happily ; and though your expectations, of which I would not advise you to talk too much, should not be totally answered, you can hardly fail to get friends who will do for you all that your present situation allows you to hope ; and if, after a few years, you should return to Scotland, you will return with a mind supplied by various conversations and many opportunities of inquiry, with much knowledge and materials for reflection and instruction." At Hilary Term, 1786, he was called to the English bar, and in the ensuing winter removed his family to London. His first professional effort is said to have been of a somewhat ominous character. A few of the idlers of Westminster Hall, conspiring to quiz poor Bozzy, as he was familiarly called, made up an imaginary case, full of all kinds of absurdities, which they caused to be presented to him for his opinion. He, taking all for real, returned a bona-fide note of judgment, which, while it almost killed his friends with laughter, covered him- self with ineffaceable ridicule. It is to be regretted that this decisive step in life was not adopted by Boswell at an earlier period, as thereby he might have rendered his Life of Johnson still more valuable than it is. Johnson having died upwards of a year before his removal, it was a step of little importance in a literary point of view ; nor did it turn out much better in respect of professional profit. So early as 1781, when Mr Burke was in power, that great man had endea- voured to procure an extension of the government patronage to wards Boswell. " We must do something for you," he said, " for our own sakes," and recom- mended him to General Conway for a vacant place, by a letter, in which his character was drawn in gloving colours. The place was not obtained ; but Boswell declared that he vaiued the letter more. lie was now enabled, by the interest of Lord Lowther, to obtain the situation of Recorder of Carlisle; a circumstance which produced the following WORDS TO BE SET FOR A RECORDER. Boswell once flamed with patriot zoai, His bow was never bent ; Now he no public wrongs ran feel Till LOWTHER nods assent. To seize the throne while faction tries And would the Prince command, The Tory Boswell coolly cries, My King's in Westmoreland. The latter verse is an allusion to the famous Regency question ; while, in the former, Boswell is reminded of his zealous exertions in behalf of monarchy in the pamphlet on the India Bill. It happening soon after that Dr John Douglas, a fellow-countryman of Boswell's, was made Bishop of Carlisle, a new and hap- pier epigram appeared : Of old, ere wise concord united this isle, Our neighbours of Scotland were foes at Carlisle; But now wh.it a change have we here on the Border, When Douglas is Bishop and Boswell Recorder! Findin"- this recordership, at so great a distance from London, attended with many inconveniences, Boswell, after holding it for about two years, resigned it. It was well known at this time that he Mas very anxious to get into parliament ; JAMES BOSWELL. 287 and many wondered that so sound a tory should not have obtained a seat at the hands of some great parliamentary proprietor. Perhaps this wonder may be explained by a passage in his last Letter to the People of Scotland. " Though ambitious," he says, " I am uncorrupted ; and I envy not high situations which are attained by the want of public virtue in men bora without it, or by the prostitution of public virtue in men born with it Though power, and wealth, and magnificence, may at first dazzle, and are, I think, most desirable, no wise man will, upon sober reflection, envy a situation which he feels he could not en- joy. My friend my ' Maecenas atavis edite regibus' Lord Mountstuart, flattered me once very highly without intending it. ' I would do any thing for you,' he said, ' but bring you into parliament, for I could not be sure but you would oppose me in something the very next day.' His lordship judged well. Though 1 should consider, with much attention, the opinion of such a friend before taking my resolution, most certainly I should oppose him in any measure which I was satisfied ought to be opposed. I cannot exist with pleasure, if I have not an honest independence of mind and of conduct; for, though no man loves good eating and drinking better than I do, I prefer the broiled blade-bone of mutton and humble port of ' downright Shippen,' to all the luxury of all the statesmen who play the political game all through." He offered himself, however, as a candidate for Ayrshire, at the general elec- tion of 1790; but was defeated by the interest of the minister, which was exerted for a more pliant partizan. On this and all other proper occasions, he made no scruple to avow himself a Tory and a royalist ; saying, however, in the words of his pamphlet just quoted, " I can drink, I can laugh, I can con- verse, in perfect good humour, with Whigs, with Republicans, with Dissenters, with Moravians, with Jews they can do me no harm my mind is made up my principles are fixed but I would vote with Tories, and pray with a Dean and Chapter." If his success at the bar and in the political world was not very splendid, ht consoled himself, so far as his own fancy was to be consoled, by the grateful task of preparing for the press his magnum opus the Life of Dr Johnson. This work appeared in 1791, in two volumes, quarto, and was received with an avidity suitable to its entertaining and valuable character. Besides a most minute narrative of the literary and domestic life of Johnson, it contained notes of all the remarkable expressions which the sage had ever uttered in Mr Boswell's presence, besides some similar records from other hands, and an immense store of original letters. As -decidedly the most faithful biographical portraiture in existence, and referring to one of the most illustrious names in literature, it is unquestionably the first book of its class ; and not only so, but there is no other biographical work at all approaching to it in merit. While this is the praise deserved by the work, it happens, rather uncommonly, that no similar degree of approbation can be extended to the writer. Though a great work, it is only so by accident, or rather through the persevering assiduity of the author in a course which no man fit to produce a designedly great work could have submitted to. It is only great, by a multiplication and agglomeration of little efforts. The preparation of a second edition of the life of Dr Johnson, was the last literary performance of Boswell, who died, May 19, 1795, at his house in Great Poland Street, London, in the 55th year of his age; having been previously ill for five weeks of a disorder which had commenced as an intermitting fever. He was buried at the family seat of Auchinleck. The character of Boswell is so amply shadowed forth by the foregoing account of his life, that little more need be said about it That he was a good-natured social man, possessed of considerable powers of imagination and humour, and ALEXANDER AND JAMES BOSWELL. well acquainted with literature and the world of common life, is universally acknowledged. He has been, at the same time, subjected to just ridicule for his total want of that natural dignity by which men of the world secure and main- tain the respect of their fellow-creatures in the daily business of life. He want-.'d this to such a degree, that even those relations whose respect was most necessary, according to the laws of nature, could scarcely extend it ; and from the same cause, his intellectual exertions, instead of shedding a lustre upon his name, have proved rather a kind of blot in his pedigree. IDs unmanly obsequiousness to great men even though some of these were great only by the respect due to talent his simpleton drollery his degrading employment as a chronicler of private conversations his mean tastes, among which was the disgusting one of a fondness for seeing executions and the half folly, half vanity, with which he could tell the most delicate tilings, personal to himself and his family, in print 1 ave altogether conspired to give him rather notoriety than true fame, and, though perhaps leaving him affection, deprive him entirely of respect. It was a remarkable point in the character of such a man, that, with powers of enter- tainment almost equal to Shakspeare's description of Yorick, he was subject to grievous fits of melancholy in private. One of his works, not noticed in the preceding narrative, was a series of papers under the title of " The Hypochon- driac," which appeared in the London Magazine for 1782, and were intended to embody the varied feelings of a man subject to that distemper. Perhaps, it is only justice to Boswell, after expressing the severe character which the world has generally pronounced upon him, 1 to give his own descrip- tion and estimate of himself, from his Tour to the Hebrides. " Think of a gentleman of ancient blood, the pride of which was his predominant passion. He was then in his 33d year, and had been about four years happily married : his inclination was to be a soldier; but his father, a respectable judge, had pressed him into the profession of the law. He had travelled a good deal, and seen many varieties of human life. He had thought more than any body sup- posed, and had a pretty good stock of general learning and knowledge. He had all Dr Johnson's principles, with some degree of relaxation. He had rather too little than too much prudence ; and, his imagination being lively, he often said things, of which the effect was very different from the intention. He resembled sometimes ' the best-natured man with the worst-natured muse.' He cannot deny himself the vanity of finishing with the encomium of Dr Johnson, whose friendly partiality to the companion of his tour, represents him as one ' whose acuteness would help any inquiry, and whose gaiety of conversation, and civility of manners, are sufficient to counteract the inconveniencies of travel, in countries less hospitable than we have passed.' " BOSWELL, ALEXANDER and JAMES, sons of the preceding. It has been remarked, as creditable to the memory of James VI.. that he educated two sons, who were both, in point of personal and intellectual character, much above the standard of ordinary men. The same remark will apply to tiie biographer of Johnson, who, whatever may be thought of his own character, reared two sons who stood forth afterwards as a credit to his parental care. A wish to educate his children in the best manner, was one of the ruling passions of this extraordinary littera- l Sir William Forbes, in his Life of Beattie, thus speaks of Boswell: " His warmth of heart towards his friends was very great ; and I have known few men who possessed a stronger sense of piety, or more fervent devotion, (tinctured, no doubt, with a little share of superstition, which had probably been in some degree fostered by his habits of intimacy with Dr Johnson) perhaps not always sufficient to regulate his imagination or direct his conduct, yet still genuine, and founded both in his understanding and his heart. For Mr Boswell 1 entertained a sincere regard, which he returned by the strongest proof in his power to con- for, by leaving me the guardian of his children." ALEXANDER BOSWELL. 289' leur in his latter years. He placec both his sons at Westminster school, and afterwards in the university of Oxford, at an expense which appears to hare been not altogether justified by his own circumstances. Alexander Boswell, who was born, October 9, 1775, succeeded his father in the possession of the family estate. He was distinguished as a spirited and amiable country gentleman, and also as a literary antiquary of no inconsiderable erudition. Perhaps his taste, in the latter capacity, was greatly fostered by the possession of an excellent collection of old manuscripts and books, which was gathered together by his ancestors, and has acquired the well-known title of the " AUCHINLECK LIBRARY." From the stores of this collection, in 1804, Sir Walter Scott published the romance of " Sir Tristram," which is judged by its learned editor to be the earliest specimen of poetry by a Scottish writer now in existence. Besides this invaluable present to the literary world, the Auchinleck Library furnished, in 1812, the black letter original of a disputation held be- tween John Knox and Quentin Kennedy at Maybolein 15G2, which was printed at the time by Knox himself, but had latterly become so scarce, that hardly another copy, besides that in the Auchinleck Library, was known to exist. Mr Boswell was at the expense of printing a fac-simile edition of this curiosity, which was accepted by the learned, as a very valuable contribution to our stock of historical literature. The taste of Alexander Boswell was of a much manlier and more sterling character than that of his father; and instead of being alternately the active and passive cause of amusement to his friends, he shone exclusively in the former capacity. He possessed, indeed, a great fund of volatile talent, and, in p.irti- cular, a most pungent vein of satire, which, while it occasionally inspired fear and dislike in those who were liable to become its objects, produced no admira- tion which was not also accompanied by respect. At an early period of his life, some of his poetical jeux d'esprit occasionally made a slight turmoil in that circle of Scottish society in which he moved. He sometimes also exercised his pen in that kind of familiar vernacular poetry which Burns again brought into fashion ; and in the department of song-writing he certainly met witli considerable success. A small volume, entitled, " Songs chiefly in the Scottish Dialect," was published by him, anonymously, in 1803, with the motto, " Xulla venenato litera mixta joco," a motto which it would have been well for him if he had never forgot. In a brief note on the second folio of this little work, he mentioned that he was induced to lay these trivial compositions in an authentic shape before the public, because corrupted copies had previously made their appearance. The truth is, some of his songs had already acquired a wide acceptation in the public, and were almost as familiar as those of Burns. 1 The volume also contains some English compositions, which still retain a popularity such as " Taste Life's Glad Moments," which, he tells us, he translated at Leipsig, in 1795, from the German song, " Freu't euch des Libens." Mr Boswell also appears, from various compositions in this little volume, to have had a turn for writing popular Irish songs. One or two of his attempts in that style, are replete with the grotesque character of the nation.* l We may instance ' Auld Gudeman, ye're a Drucken Carle," * Jenny's Bawbee," and " Jenny Dang the Weaver." * It is hardly worth while to say more of a few fugitive lyrics; but fat we cannot help pointing out a remarkably beautiful antithesis, in one styled " The Old Chieftain to his Sons:" " The auld will speak, the young maun hear, Be canty, but be gude and leal ; Your ain ills aye hae heart to bear, Anither's aye hae heart to feel.' 1 In another he thus ludicrously adverts, in a fictitious character, to the changes which modern 290 ALEXANDER BOS\YJ:i,L. In 1810, Mr Boswell published a small volume under the title, "Edinburgh, or the Ancient Royalty, a Sketch of former Manners, by Simon Gray.'' It is a kind of city eclogue, in which a farmer, who knew the town in a past age, is supposed to converse regarding its modern changes, with a city friend. It con- tains some highly curious memorials of the simple manners which obtained in Edinburgh, before the change described in the song just quoted. At a subse- quent period, Mr Boswell established, a private printing-press at Auchinlcck, from which he issued various trifles in prose and verse, some of which are characterised by much humour. In 1816, appeared a poetical tale, somewhat like Burns's " Tarn o Shanter," entitled, " Skeldon Haughs, or the Sow is Flitted !" being founded on a traditionary story regarding an Ayrshire feud of the fifteenth century. 1 In 1821, Mr Boswell was honoured with, what had been the chief object of his ambition for many years, a baronetcy of Great Britain. About this period, politics ran very high in the country, and Sir Alexander, who had inherited all the Tory spirit of his father, sided warmly with the ministry. In manners, rather than time, have produced upon the external and internal economy of the Scottish capital : Hech ! what a change hae we now in this town ! A' now are braw lads, the lasses a' glancin' ; Folk maun be dizzy gaun aye in this roun', For deil a hae't 's done now but fuastin' and dancin'. Gowd's no that scanty in ilk siller pock, Whan ilka bit laddie maun hae his bit staigie; But I kent the day when there was na a Jock, But trotted about upon honest shanks-naigie. Little was stown then, and less gaed to waste, Barely a mullin for mice or for rattens ; The thrifty gudewife to the flesh-market pared, Her equipage a' just a gude pair o' pattens. Folk were as gude then, and friends were as leal ; Though coaches were scant, wi' their cattle a' cantrin' ; Right aire we were tell't by the housemaid or chiel, ' Sir, an ye please, here's yer lass and a lantern. ' The town may be cloutit and pieced till it meets, A' neebors penorth and besouth without haltin' Brigs may be biggit ower lums and ower streets, Tne Nor- Loch itsel' heap'd as heigh as the Gallon. But whar is true friendship, and whar will you see A' that is gude, honest, modest, and thrifty ? Tak gray hairs and wrinkles, and hirple wi' me, And think on the seventeen-hundred and fifty. 1 Kennedy of Bargeny tethered a sow on the lands of his feudal enemy Crawford of Ke.rse, and resolved"^ that the latter gentleman, with all his vassals, should not be permitted to remove or " flit " the animal To defeat this bravado at the very first, the adherents of Grawford assembled in great force, and entered into active fight with the Kennedies, who, with tlieir sow, were at length driven back with great slaughter, though not till the son of the laird of }\, no, who had led his father's forces, wa< slain. The point of the poem lies in the dia- logue which passed between the old laird and a messenger who came to apprise him of the evtnt : ' ' Is the sow fiittit? tell me, loon ! Is au'id Kyle up and Garrick down?' Mingled wi' sobs, his broken tale The youth began; Ah, Kerse, bewail This luckless day ! Your blythe son, John, Ah, waes my heart, lies on the loan And he could sing like only merle! ' Is the sow flitted?' cried the carle; ' Gie me my answer short and plain, Is the sow flitted, yammerin wean !' ' The sow (deil tak her) 's ower the water And at their backs the Grawfords batter The Carrick couts are cowed and bitted !' ' My thumb for Jock! THE sow is FUTTKD.' " JAMES BOSWELL. 291 the beginning of the year 1821, a few gentlemen of similar prepossessions, conceived it to be not only justifiable, but necessary, that the fervour of the radical press, as it was called, should be met by a corresponding fervour on the other side, so that the enemies of the government might be combated with their own weapons. Hence arose a newspaper in Edinburgh styled the Beacon, to which Sir Alexander Boswell contributed a few jeux d'esprit, aimed at the lead- ing men on the other side, and alleged to have far exceeded the proper line of political sarcasm. These being continued in a subsequent paper, which was pub- lished at Glasgow, under the name of the Sentinel, at length were traced to Mieir author by James Stuart, Esq. younger of Dunearn, who had been the object of some of the rudest attacks, and repeatedly accused of cowardice. The consequence of this discovery was a challenge from Mr Stuart to Sir Alexander, and the hostile parties having met near Auchtertool in Fife, March 26, 1822, the latter received a shot in the bottom of the neck, which terminated his exist- ence next day. 3Ir Stuart was tried for this offence, by the High Court of Justi- ciary, but most honourably acquitted. Sir Alexander left a widow and several children. BOSWELL, JAMES, the second son of the biographer of Johnson, was, as already mentioned, educated at Westminster School. He was afterwards entered of Brazen-nose College, Oxford, and there had the honour to be elected fellow upon the Vinerian foundation. Mr Boswell possessed talents of a superior order, sound classical scholarship, and a most extensive and intimate knowledge of our early literature. In the investigation of every subject he pursued, his industry, judgment, and discrimination, were equally remarkable; his memory was unusu- ally tenacious and accurate ; and he was always as ready, as he was competent, to communicate his stores of information for the benefit of others. Mr Malone was influenced by these qualifications, added to the friendship which he entertain- ed for Mr Boswell, to select him as hh literary executor; and to his care this eminent commentator intrusted the publication of an enlarged and amended edition of Shakspeare, which he had long been meditating. As Mr Malone's papers were left in a state scarcely intelligible, it is believed that no man but one of kindred genius like Mr Boswell, could have rendered them at all available. This, however, Mr Boswell did in the most efficient manner ; farther enriotiing the work with many excellent notes of his own, besides collating the text with all the earlier editions. This work, indeed, which extends to twenty-one volumes, 8vo, must be considered as not only the most elaborate edition of Shakspeare, but perhaps the greatest edition of any work in the Eng- lish language. In the first volume, Mr Boswell has stepped forward to de- fend the literary reputation of Mr Malone against the severe attacks made by a writer of distinguished eminence, upon many of his critical opinions and state- ments ; a task of great delicacy, and which Mr Boswell performed in so spirited and gentlemanly a manner, that his preface may be fairly quoted as a model of controversial writing. In the same volume are inserted " Memoirs of Mr Malone," originally printed by Mr Boswell for private circulation ; and a valuable essay on the metre and phraseology of Shakspeare, the materials for which were partly collected by Mr Malone, but which was entirely indebted to Mr Boswell for arrangement and completion. Mr Boswell inherited from his father a keen relish of the society of the metropolis, and accordingly he spent his life almost exclusively in the Middle Temple. Few men were better fitted to appreciate and contribute to the plea- sures of social intercourse ; his conversational powers, and the unfailing cheerful- ness of his disposition, rendered him everywhere an acceptable guest ; but it was the goodness of his heart, that warmth of friendship which knew no bounds 292 ARCHIBALD BOWER. when a call was made upon his services, which formed the sterling- excellence, and the brightest feature of Mr Boswcll's character. Mhis amiable man and excellent scholar died, February 24, 1822, in the forty-third year of his age, and was buried in the Temple Church, by a numerous train of son-owing friends. It is a melancholy circumstance, that his brother, Sir Alexander, had just returned from performing the last offices to a beloved brother, when he himself was summoned from existence in the manner above related. BOWER, ARCHIBALD, a learned person, but of dubious fame, was born on the 17th of January, 1C 86, near Dundee. He was a younger son of a respectable Catholic family, which, for several centuries, had possessed an estate in Forfar- shire. In 1702, he was sent to the Scots College at Douay, where he studied for the church. At the end of the year 1706, having completed his iirst year of philosophy, he went to Koine, and there, December 9, was admitted into the order of Jesus. After his noviciate, he taught classical literature and philosophy, for two years, at Fano, and subsequently he spent three years at Fermo. In 1717, he was recalled to Rome, to study divinity in the Roman College. His last vows were made at Arezzo, in 1722. Bower's fame as a teacher was now, according to his own account, spread over all the Italian states, and he had many invitations to reside in different places, to none of which he acceded, till the College of Macerata chose him for their professor. He was now arrived at the mature age of forty ; and it was not to have been expected that any sudden change, either in his religious sentiments or in his moral conduct, would take place after that period of life. Probably, however, Bower had never before this time been exposed to any temptation. Being now appointed confessor to the nunnery of St Catherine at Macerata, he is alleged to have commenced a criminal intercourse with a nun of the noble family of Buon- acorsi. Alarmed, it is said, for the consequences of his imprudence, he deter- mined upon flying from the dominions of the Pope ; a step which involved the greatest danger, as he had previously become connected, in the capacity of coun- sellor, with the Holy Inquisition, which invariably punished apostasy with death. Bower's own account of his flight sets forth conscientious scruples on the score of religion, as having alone urged him to take that step ; but it is hardly credible that a man in his situation could expose his life to imminent danger from a sud- den access of scrupulosity. The circumstances of his flight are given in the fol- lowing terms by himself: " To execute that design with some safety, I purposed to beg leave of the Inquisitor to visit the virgin at Loretto, but thirteen miles distant, and to pass a week there, but, in the meantime, to make the best of my way to the country of the Grisons, the nearest country to Macerata out of the reach of the Inquisition. Having, therefore, after many conflicts with myself, asked leave to visit the neighbouring sanctuary, and obtained it, I set out on horseback the very next morning, leaving, as I purposed to keep the horse, his full value with the owner. I took the road to Loretto, but turned out of it at a small distance from Recenati, after a most violent struggle with myself, the attempt appearing to me, at that juncture, quite desperate and impracticable ; and the dreadful doom reserved for me, should I miscarry, presenting itself to my mind in the strongest light. But the reflection that I had it in my power to avoid being taken alive, and a per- suasion that a man in my situation might lawfully avoid it, when every other means failed him, at the expense of his life, revived my staggering resolution , and all my fears ceasing at once, I steered my course to Calvi in the dukedom of Urbino, and from thence through the Romagna into the Bolognese, keeping the by-roads, and at a good distance from the cities of Fano, Pisaro, Rimini, Forli, Faenza. and Tivola, through which the high road passed. Thus I advanced very ARCHIBALD BOWER. 293 slowly, travelling, generally speaking, in rery bad roads, and often in places where there was no road at all, to avoid, not only the cities and towns, but even ihe villages. In the meantime, I seldom had any other support than some coarse provisions, and a very small quantity even of them, that. the poor shepherds and wood-cleavers could spare me. My horse fared not better than myself; but, in choosing my sleeping-place, I consulted his convenience as much as my own ; passing the night where I found most shelter for myself, and most grass for him. In Italy there are very few solitary farm-houses or cottages, the country people there all living together in villages ; and I thought it far safer to lie where I could be any way sheltered, than to venture into any of them. Thus I spent seventeen days before I got out of the ecclesiastical state ; and I very narrowly escaped being taken or murdered on the very borders of that state. It happened thiw : " I had passed two whole days without any kind of subsistence whatever, meeting nobody in the by-roads that would supply me with any, and fearing to come near any house. As I was not far from the borders of the dominions of the Pope, I thought I should be able to hold out till I got into the Modenese, where I be- lieved I should be in less danger than while I remained in the papal dominions ; but finding myself, about noon of the third day, extremely weak and ready to taint, I came into the high road that leads from Bologna to Florence, at a few miles distance from the former city, and alighted at a post-house that stood quite by itself. Having asked the woman of the house whether she had any victuals ready, and being told that she had, I went to open the door of the only room in the house, (that being a place where gentlemen only stop to change horses,) and saw, to my great surprise, a placard pasted on it, with a most minute description of my whole person, and the promise of a reward of 800 crowns, about j200 English money, for delivering me up alive to the inquisition, being a fugitive from the holy tribunal, and 600 crowns for my head. By the same placard, all persons were forbidden, on pain of the greater excommunication, to receive, harbour, or entertain me, to conceal or to screen me, or to be any way aiding or assisting to me in making my escape. This greatly alarmed me, as the rea- der may well imagine ; but I was still more affrighted when entering the room I saw two fellows drinking there, who, fixing their eyes upon me as soon as 1 came, continued looking at me very steadfastly. I strove, by wiping my face, by blowing my nose, by looking out at the window, to prevent their having a full view of me. But one of them saying, ' The gentleman seems afraid to be seen,' I put up my handkerchief, and turning to the fellow, said boldly, ' What do you mean, you rascal ? Look at me, I am not afraid to be seen.' He said nothing, but, looking again stedfastly at me, and nodding his head, went out, and his com- panion immediately followed him. I watched them, and seeing them with two or three more in closa conference, and no doubt consulting whether they should apprehend me or not, I walked that moment into the stable, mounted my horse unobserved by them ; and, while they were deliberating in the orchard behind the house, rode off at full speed, and in a few hours got into the Modenese, where I refreshed, both with food and rest, as I was there in no immediate danger, my horse and myself. I was indeed surprised that those fellows did not pursue me ; nor can I any other way account for it, but by supposing, what is not improba- ble, that, as they were strangers as well as myself, and had all the appearance of banditti or ruffians flying out of the dominions of the pope, the woman of the house did not care to trust them with her horses." Bower now directed his course through the cantons of Switzerland, and as some of these districts were Catholic, though not under the dominion of the inquisition, he had occasionally to resume themode of travelling above described, in order 10 avoid being taken. At length, May 1726, he reached the Scots 294 ARCHIBALD BOWER. College at Douay, where he threw himself upon the protection of the rector. Accoiding to his owi: narrative, which, however, has been contradicted in many points, he thus proved, that, though he had fled from the horrors of the holy tribunal, and had begun to entertain some doubts U|,on several parts of the Catholic doctrines, he was not disposed to abandon entirely the j rolession of faith in which he had been educated. He even describes a correspondence which he entered into with the superior of his order in France, who at length recommended him to make the best of his way to England, in order that he might get fairly beyond the reach of the inquisition. This he did under such circumstances of ron .-wed danger, that he would haie been detained at Calais, but for the kind- ness of an English nobleman. Lord Baltimore, who conveyed him over to Dover in his own yacht. He arrived at London in July or August 17^6. His first friend of any eminence in England was Dr Aspimvall, who, like him- self, had formerly belonged to the order of Jesus. His conversations with this gentleman, and with the more celebrated DrClarke, and Berkeley bishop of Cloyne, produced, or appeared to produce, such a change in his religious sentiments, that he soon after abjured the Catholic faith. For six years, he continued a protestant, but of no denomination. At length he joined the communion of the church of England, which he professed to consider " as free in her service as any reformed church from the idolatrous practices and superstitions of popery, and less inclined, than many others, to fanaticism and enthusiasm.'' By his friomls he was recommended to Lord Aylmer, who wanted a person to rssist him in reading the classics. While thus employed, he conducted a review or magazine, which was started in 1730, under the title " Historia Literaria," and was fin- ished in eight volumes, in 1734. Being little acquainted with the English tongue, he composed the early part of this work in Italian, and had it translated by an English student ; but before the work was concluded, he had made him- self sufficiently acquainted with English, to dispense with Hs translator. After its conclusion, he was engaged by the publishers of the Ancient Universal His- tory, for which work he wrote during a space of nine years, contributing, in particular, the article Roman History. It is said that the early part of this production is drawn out to an undue length, considering that there were various other abridgments of that portion of the history of Rome ; while the latter part, referring to the Eastern empire, though comparatively novel and valuable, was, from the large space already occupied, cut down into as many paragraphs as it ought to have occupied pages. The second edition of the Universal History was committed for revisal to J\lr Bower's care, and it is said that, though he received 300 from the publishers, he performed his task, involving though it did a very large commercial interest, in the most superficial and unsatisfactory manner. His writings had been so productive before the year 1740, that he then possessed \ 100 in South Sea annuities. It is alleged that he now wished to be restored to the bosom of the church, in order that he might share in its bounty as a mis- sionary. In order to conciliate its favour, and attest his sincerity, he is said to have offered to it, through father Shirburn, then provincial of England, the whole of his fortune on loan. The money was received on the conditions stipulated by himself, and was afterwards augmented to 1350, for which, in August 1743, a bond was given, allowing him an annuity equal to seven per cent, upon the principal. He is said to have been so far successful in his object that, in 1744 or 1745, he was re-admitted into, or rather reconciled to the order of Jesus though it does not appear that he ever received the employment which he expected. In 1747, having been tempted by a considerable otter to write a history of the popes in a style Jigreeable to protestant feeling, he is alleged to hare commenced a oorrtspondence with father Shirburn for the purpose of get- ARCHIBALD BOWER. 295 ting back his money, lest, on breaking again with the church, the whole should be forfeited. He pretended that he had engaged in an illicit intercourse with a lady, to whom the money in reality belonged, a;id that, in order to disengage himself from a connection which lay heavily upon his conscience, he wished to refund the money. Accordingly, on the 20th of June, 1747, he received it back. If we are to believe himself, he did not lend the money to Shirburn, but to Mr Hill, a Jesuit, who transacted money affairs in his capacity as an attorney. He retracted it, he said , in order to be able to marry. The letters shown as having been written by him to father Shirburn, were, he said, forgeries prepared by catholics in order to destroy his popularity with the protestants. But the literary world has long settled the question against Bower. The letters were published in 1756, by his countryman Dr John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, along with a commentary proving their authenticity. The replies of Bower, though ingenious, are by no means satisfactory, and it is obvious that the whole transac- tion proves him to have been a man who little regarded principle, when he had the prospect of improving his fortune. The first volume of his History of the Popes, was published in 1748 ; and he was soon after, by the interest of Lord Lyttleton, appointed librarian to Queen Caroline. It must be remarked that this irreproachable nobleman remained the friend of Bower, while all the rest of the world turned their backs upon him ; and it must be confessed, that such a fact is calculated to stagger the faith of many even in the acuteness of Bishop Douglas. On the 4th of August, 1749, when he had just turned the grand climacteric, he married a niece of Bishop Nicholson , with a fortune of ;4000. In 1751, he published his second volume, and, in 175.3, his third, which brought down the history to the death of Pope Stephen. This work, partly from the circumstances of the author, appears to have been received with great favour by the dissenters and more devout party of the church. Bower is alleged by his enemies to have kept up the interest of the publication, by stories of the danger in which he lay from the malignity of the Catholics, who, as he gave out, attempted on one occasion to carry him off by water from Greenwich. Lord Lyttleton, in April 1754, appointed him clerk of the buck warrants. It was in 1756, that his personal reputation received its first grand shock from the exposure of Dr Douglas, who next year published a second tract, as fully condemnatory of his literary character. This latter production, entitled, " Bower and T illemont Compared," showed that a great part of his History of the Popes was nothing more than a translation of the French historian. He endeavoured to repel the attack in three laboured pamphlets; but Dr Douglas, in a reply, confirmed his original statements by unquestionable documents. Before the controversy ended, Bovver had issued his fourth volume, and, in 1757, an abridgment of what was published appeared at Amsterdam. The fifth volume ap- peared in 1761, during which year he also published " Authentic Memoirs con- cerning the Portuguese Inquisition, in a series of letters to a friend," 8vo. The History of the Popes was finally completed in seven volumes ; and on the 3rd of September, 176U, the author died at his house in Bond Street, in the eighty-first year of his age. 1 He was buried in Mary-le-bone church-yard, where there is a monument to him, bearing the following inscription : " A man exemplary for every social virtue. Justly esteemed by all who knew him for his strict honesty and integrity. A faithful friend and a sincere Chris- tian. " False witnesses rose up against him, and laid to his charge things that he 1 A letter written at the request of his widow to notify his death to his nephew in Scotland (which 1 have seen,) mentions that he bore a final illness of three weeks " in every way suitable to the character of a good Christian " 296 WALTER BOWER. MARK BOYD. knew not ; they imagined wickedness in their hearts and practised it : their delight is in lies : they conspired together, and laid their net to destroy him guiltless : the very abjects came together against him, they gaped upon him with their mouths, they sharpened their tongues like a serpent, working deceitfully ; they compassed him about with words of malice, and hated, and fought against him without a cause. " He endured their reproach with fortitude, suffering wrongfully." "Unhappy vanity !" exclaims Samuel Ayscough, who preserves the inscrip- tion, " thus endeavouring, as it were, to carry on the deception with God, which he was convicted of at the bar of literary justice : how much better would it have been to let his name sink in oblivion, than thus attempt to excite the pity of those only who are unacquainted with the history of his life ; and, should it raise a desire in any person to inquire, it must turn their pity into contempt." In Bower, we contemplate a man of considerable merit in a literary point of view, debased by the peculiar circumstances in which he entered the world. A traitor to his own original profession of faith, he never could become a good sub- ject to any other. His subsequent life was that of an adventurer and a hypo- crite ; and such at length was the dilemma in which he involved himself by his unworthy practices, that, for the purpose of extricating himself, he was reduc- ed to the awful expedient of denying upon oath the genuineness of letters which were proved upon incontestable evidence to be his. Even, however, from the evil of such a life, much good may be extracted. The infamy in which his declining years were spent, must inform even those to whom good is not good alone for its own sake, that the straight paths of candour and honour are the only ways to happiness, and that money or respect, momentarily enjoyed at the ex- pense of either, can produce no permanent or effectual benefit, BOWER, WALTER, an historical writer of the fifteenth century, was born at Haddington, in 1385. At the age of eighteen, he assumed the religious habit; and after finishing his philosophical and theological studies, visited Paris in order to study the laws. Having returned to his native country, he was unanimously elected Abbot of St Colm, in the year 1418. After the death of Fordoun, the historian, (see that article,) he was requested, by Sir David Stewart of Rossyth, to undertake the completion of the Scotichronicon, or Chronicles of Scotland, which had been brought up by the above writer only to the 23d chapter of the fifth book. In transcribing the part written by Fordoun, Bower inserted large interpolations. He completed the work in sixteen books, which brought the narrative to the death of James the First; and he is said to have been much indebted for materials to the previous labours of Fordoun. Bower, like Fordoun, wrote in a scholastic and barbarous Latin; and their work, though it must be considered as one of the great fountains of early Scottish history, is characterised by few of the essential qualities of that kind of composition. BOYD, MARK, an extraordinary genius, who assiMned the additional name of ALEXANDER, from a desire of assimilating himself to liio illustrious hero of Mace- don, was a younger son of Robert Boyd of I'inkell in Ayrshire, who was great- grandson to Robert Boyd, great Chamberlain of Scotland. Mark Boyd was born on the 13th of January, 15(52. His father having died while he was a child, he was educated under the care of his uncle, James Boyd of Trochrig, titular Archbishop of Glasgow. His headstrong temper showed itself in early youth, in quarrels with his instructors, and before he had finished his academical course, he left the care of his friends, and endeavoured to obtain some notice at court. It affords a dreadful picture of the character of Boyd, that, even in a scene ruled by such a spirit as Stuart, Earl of Arran, he was found too violent : one duel and numberless broils, in which he became engaged, rendered it necessary that he MARK BOYD. 297 should try his fortune elsewhere. By the advice of his friends, who seem to have given up all hope of his coming to any good in his own country, he travelled to France, in order to assume the profession of arms. While lingering at Paris, he lost his 'little stock of money at dice. This seems to have revived better feelings in his breast. He began to study under various teachers at Paris ; then went to the university of Orleans, and took lessons in civil law from Kobertus ; lastly, he removed to Bourges, where he was received with kindness by the celebrated Cu- jacius. This great civilian happening to have a crazy fondness for the writings of the early Latin poets, Boyd gained his entire favour by writing a few poems in the barbarous style of Ennius. The plague breaking out at Bourges, he was obliged to fly to Lyons, whence he was driven by the same pestilence into Italy. After spending some time in this country, he returned to France, and is supposed to have there acted for some time as private tutor to a young gentleman named Dauconet. In 1587, commenced the famous wars of the League. Boyd, though a protestant, or afterwards professing to be so, joined with the Catholic party, in company with his pupil, and for some time led the life of a soldier of fortune. His share in the mishaps of war, consisted of a wound in the ankle. In 15S8, the Germans and Swiss being driven out of France, the campaign terminated, and Boyd retired to Thoulouse, where he re-commenced the study of civil law. liis studies were here interrupted by a popular insurrection in favour of the Catholic interest, but in which he took no part. Having fallen under some sus- picion, probably on account of his country, he was seized by the insurgents, and thrown into prison. By the intercession of some of his learned friends, he was relieved from this peril, and permitted to make his escape to Bourdeaux. He has left a most animated account of the insurrection, from which it may be gathered that the expedients assumed in more recent periods of French history, for protecting cities by barricades, chains, and other devices, were equally fami- liar in the reign of Henry the Great. For several years, Boyd lived a party- coloured life, alternating between study and war. He had a sincere passion for arms, and entertained a notion that to live entirely without the knowledge and practice of military affairs was only to be half a man. It is to be regretted, that his exertions as a soldier were entirely on the side adverse to his own and his country's faith ; a fact which proves how little he was actuated by principle. In the midst of all the broils of the League, he had advanced considerably in the preparation of a series of lectures on the civil law ; but he never found an oppor- tunity of delivering them. He also composed a considerable number of Latin poems, which were published in one volume at Antwerp, in 1592. Having now turned his thoughts homewards, he endeavoured, in this work, to attract the favourable atten- tion of James VI., by a very flattering dedication. But it does not seem to have had any effect. He does not appear to have returned to his native country for some years after this period. In 1595, when his elder brother died, he was still in France. Returning soon after, he is said to have undertaken the duty of travelling preceptor to John, Earl of Cassillis ; and when his task was rccom- plished, he returned once more. He died of a slow fever, April 10th, 1601, and wcs buried in the church of Daily. Mark Alexander Boyd left seveial compositions behind him, of which a few have been published. The most admired are his " Epistolas Heroidum," and liis " Hymni," which are inserted in the " Delicias Poetarum Scotorum," published at Amsterdam, in 1637. His style in Latin poetry is shown by Lord Hailes to be far from correct, and his ideas are often impure and coarse. \et when regarded rs the effusions of a soaring genius, which seems to have looked upon every ordinary walk of human exertion as beneath it, we may admire the gene- ral excellence, while we overlook mean defects. The Tears of Venus on the i. 2 P 298 ROBERT BOYD. Death of Adonis, which has been often extracted from his Epistola?, seems to me to be a beautiful specimen of Latin versification, and in impassioned feeling almost rivalling Pope's liloise. An exact list of the remainder of his compost, tions, which still lie in manuscript in the Advocates' Library, is given in his life by Lord Haiies, which was one of the few tentamina contributed by thai antiquary towards a Scottish Biographical Dictionary. Lord Haiies represents the vanity of Boyd as having been very great ; but it is obvious that he could offer as high incense to others as to himself. He has the hardihood to compli- ment the peaceful James VI. ns superior to Pallas or Mars : in another place, he speaks ol that monarch as having distinguished himself : t battles and sieges. It is well known that neither the praise nor the facts were true ; and we can only account for such inordinate flattery, by supposing, what there is really n.urh reason to believe, that p; negyric in those days was a matter of course, and not expected to contain any truth, or even vraisemblance. This theory receives some countenance from a circumstance mentioned by Lord Haiies. 'I ho dedica- tion, it seems, in which King James was spoken of us a hardy warrior, was ori- ginally written for a real warrior; but the name being afterwards changed, it was not thought necessary to alter the praise ; and so the good Solomon, \vho is said to have shrunk from the very sight of cold iron, stands forth rs a second Agamemnon. BOYD, ROBERT, of Trochrig an eminent divine of the seventeenth century, was born at Glasgow in 1578. He was the son of James Boyd, "Tulchan-nrchbishop" of Glasgow, and Margaret, daughter of James Chalmers of Gaitgirth, chief of that n.-iiue. On the death of his father, which happened when he was only three years old, his mother retired to the family residence in Ayrshire, and Boyd, along with Thomas, his younger brother, was in due time sent to the grammar school of the county town. From thence he was removed to the university of Edinburgh, where he studied philosophy under Mr Charles Ferme, (or Fairholm.) one of the regents, and afterwards divinity under the celebrated Robert Rollock. In compliance with the custom of the times, he then went abroad for the pur- pose of pui-suing his studies, and France was destined to be the first sphere of his usefulness. He taught various departments of literature in the schools of Tours and Montauban, at the first of which places he became acquainted with the famous Dr Rivet In 1604, he was ordained pastor of the church at Vrr- teuil, and in I 600 he was appointed one of the Professors in the university of Saumur, which had been founded in 15 1 J3, by the amiable Philip de Mornay, better known by the title of Du Plessis. Boyd also discharged the duties of a pastor in the church at the same town, and, soon after, became Professor of Divinity. As he had now the intention of remaining for some years abroad, he bethought himself of entering into the married state, and having met with " an honest virgin of the family of Malivern," says Wodrow, ' he sought her parents for their consent, who having received a satisfactory testimonial of the nobility of his birth, and the competency of his estate, they easily yielded, and so he took her to wife, with the good liking of the church and the university, who hoped that by this means he would be fixed among them, so as never to enter- tain thoughts of returning to Scotland to settle there." But in this they were soon disappointed, for king James having heard through several noblemen, re- lations of Mr Boyd, of his worth and talents, offered him the principalship of the university of Glasgow. The duties of principal in that college were, by the charter of this monarch, not confined even to those connected with that institution, lie was required to teach theology on one day, and Hebrew and Syriac the next, alternately ; but this was not all. The temporalities of the rectory and vic::rage of Govan had TjT J. -Rogers . . ROBERT BOYD. 299 been annexed to it, under the condition that die principal should preach on Sunday in the church of that parish. Under these circumstances, it could not be expected that Mr Boyd could have much leisure to premeditate his lectures. Wodrovv informs us, that he did not read them, " but uttered all in a continued discourse, without any hesitation, and with as much ease and freedom of speech, as the most eloquent divine is wont to deliver his sermons in his mother tongue." It will be remembered, that the prelections were then delivered in Latin, and Principal Baillie, who studied under Mr Boyd, mentions that, at a distance of thirty years, the tears, the solemn vows, and the ardour of the desires produced by the Principal's Latin prayers, were still fresh in his memory.' From the assimilation which was then rapidly taking' place to the episcopalian form of church government, Mr Boyd felt his situation peculiarly unpleasant. He could not acquiesce in the decisions of the Perth assembly, and it could not be expected that he would be allowed to retain his office under any other condi- tion than that of compliance. He therefore preferred voluntarily resigning his office, and retiring to his country residence. Soon after this period, he was ap- pointed Principal of the university of Edinburgh, and one of the ministers of that city ; but there he was not long allowed to remain. His majesty insisted upon his compliance with the Perth articles, and an intimation to that effect having been made to him, he refused, and, to use the quaint expression of the historian, " swa took his leave of them." He was now ordered to contiue him- self within the bounds of Carrick. His last appointment was to Paisley, but a quarrel soon occurred with the widow of the Earl of Abercorn, who had lately turned papist, and this was a source of new distress to him. Naturally of a weakly constitution, and worn down by a series of misfortunes, he now laboured under a complication of diseases, which led to his death at Edinburgh, whither he had gone to consult the physicians, on the 5th of January, 1627, in the 49th year of his age. Of his works, few of which are printed, the largest and best known is his " Praslectiones in Epistolam ad Ephesios." From the circumstances which oc- curred in the latter part of his life, he was prevented getting it printed as he in- tended. After his death, a copy of the MS. was sent to Dr Rivet, who agreed with Chouet of Geneva for the printing, but when returning to that place with the MS. in his possession, the ship was taken by the Dunkirkers, and the work was seized by some Jesuits, who would part with it " nee prece nee pretio." Fortunately the original still remained, and it was, after many delays, printed " Impensis Societatis Stationariorum," in 1652, folio. To the work is prefixed a memoir of the author, by Dr Rivet ; but as their acquaintance did not com- mence till 1598 or 1599, there are several errors in his account of the earlier part of Boyd's life, all of which Wodrow has with great industry and accuracy corrected. The only other prose work of Mr Boyd, ever published, is his ' ; Monita de filii sui primogeniti Institutione, ex Authoris MSS. autographis per R(obertum) S(ibbald), M. D. edita," Svo, 1701. The style of this work, accord- ing to Wodrow, is pure, the system perspicuous ; and prudence, observation, and piety, appear throughout Besides these, the " Hecatombe ad Christum," the ode to Dr Sibbald, and the laudatory poem on king James, are in print, two first are printed in the " Delicia; Poetarum Scotorum." The Hecatombe h been reprinted at Edinburgh in 1701, and subsequently in the ' Scotorum Musaj Sacra." The verses to king James have been prm Adamson's " Muses' Welcome ; and it is remarkable, that it seems to have altogether overlooked by Wodrow. All these poems justify the opinion, that 1 i Bodli Prselecviones in Epist. ad Ephes. Prafat. ad Leetorem. 3UU ZACHARY BOYD. Boyd devoted more of his attention to the composition of Latin poetry, he might have excelled in that elegant accomplishment. In the time of Wodrow, several MSS. still remained in the possession of the family of Trochrig, consisting of Sermons in English and French, his Philo- theca, a kind of obituary, extracts from which have lately been printed in the second part of the Miscellany of the Bannatyne Club. His lite has been written at great length by the venerable historian of the sufferings of the Scottish church, already frequently quoted, 'Ihose who wish to know more of this learned man, than the limits of our work will permit, are referred to the very interesting series of the Wodrow biographies in the library of the university of Glasgow article Boyd. BOYD, ZACHARY, an eminent divine \ith the noble examples fur- nished by sacred history, and with such a deep sense of the responsibility attached to his office, we are prepared to expect the same consistency of principle, and decision of conduct in admonishing men, even of the most exalted rank. * * * We have every reason to suppose that the tenor of his conduct in life became the high office of which he made profession. From the sternness with which he censures manners and customs prevalent in society, the conforming to many of which could incur no moral guilt, it is to be presumed that he was of the most rigid and austere class of divines. * * * We are ignorant of any of the circumstances attending his last moments, a time peculiarly interesting in the life of every man ; but from what we know of him, we may venture to say, with- out the hazard of an erroneous conclusion, that his state of mind, at the trying hour, was that of a firm and cheerful expectation in the belief in the great doc- trines of Christianity, which he had so earnestly inculcated, both from the pul- pit and the press, with the additional comfort and support of a long and labo- rious life in his Master's sen-ice. About twenty-five years before his death, he was so near the verge of the grave, that his friends had made the necessary pre- paration for his winding sheet, which he afterwards found among his books. He seems to have recovered from the disease with a renewed determination to * The accurate editor of a new edition of " The Last Battell of the Soule," (Glasgow, lasi,) truni wiiose memoir of Mr Zachary most of these fac.s art- taken, blames 3Ir Baiilic in iii\ opinion, unjustly, for having tied on this occasion, while 31 r Zachary had the supe- rior courage to remain. It should be recollected that Mr Baillie had particular reason to dread the vengeance of Cromwell and his army, having been one of the principal indivi- duals concerned in the bringing home of the King, and consequently in the provocation of the present war. 304 ZACIIARY BOYD. employ the remainder of his life in the cause to which he h;;d been previously devoted : he pursued perseveringly to near its termination, this happy course and just lived to complete an extensive manuscript work, hearing for its title. ' The Notable places of the Scripture expounded,' at the end of which he adds, in a tremulous and indistinct hand-writing, ' Heero the .author was neere his end, and was able to do no more, .March 3d, 1(353.' ' 5 ."Mr Xachary had been twice married, first, to l.lizabeth Fleming-, of whom r,o memorial is preserved, and secondly, to .Margaret Mure, third daughter of Wil- liam Mure of Glanderston, ( near Neilston, Renfrewshire.) By neither of his wives had he any offspring. The second wife, surviving him, married for her second husband the celebrated Durham, author of the Commentary on the Re- velation -to whom, it would appear, she had betrayed some partiality even in her first husband's lifetime. There is a traditional anecdote, that, when Mr Zachary was dictating his last will, his spouse made one modest request, namely, that he would bequeath something to Mr Durham. He answered, with a sarcastic reference to herself, " Ml lea' him what I canna keep frae him.'' He seems to have possessed an astonishing quantity of worldly goods for a Scottish clergy- man of that period. He had lent eleven thousand merks to Mure of Rowallan, five thousand to the Earl of Glencairn, and six thousand to the Karl of London ; which sums, with various others, swelled his whole property in money to .4527 Scots. This, after the deduction of certain expenses, was divided, in terms of his will, between his relict and the college of Glasgow. About --20,000 Scots is said to have been the sum realized by the College, besides his library and man- uscript compositions; but it is a mistake that he made any stipulation as to the publication of his writings, or any part of them. To this splendid legacy, we appear to be chiefly indebted for the present elegant buildings of the College, which were mostly erected under the care of Principal Gillespie during the period of the Commonwealth. In gratitude tor the munificent gift of .Mr Zachary, a bust of his figure was erected over the gateway within the court, with an appro- priate inscription. There is also a portrait of him in the Divinity Hall of the College. Nineteen works, chiefly devotional and religious, and none of them of great extent, were published by Mr Zachary during his lifetime ; but these bore a small proportion to his manuscript writings, which are no less than eighty-six in number, chiefly comprised within thirteen quarto volumes, written in a very close hand, apparently for the press. Besides those contained in the thirteen volumes, are three others " /ion's Flowers, or Christian Poems for Spiritual Edification." 2 vols. 4to. " The English Academic, containing precepts and purpose for the weal both of Soul and Body," 1 vol. 12mo. and "The Four Evangels in English verse.'' " Mr Boyd appears to have been a scholar of very considerable learning. He composed in Latin, and his qualifications in that language may be deemed respectable. His works also bear the evidence of his having been possessed of a critical knowledge of the Greek, Hebrew, and otlior languages. As a prose writer, he will bear comparison with any of the Scottish divines of the same age. He is superior to Rutherford, and, in general, more grammatically correct than even Baillie himself, who was justly esteemed a very learned man. His style may be considered excellent for the period. Of his characteristics as a writer, his originality of thought is particularly striking. He discusses many of his sub- jects with spirit and ingenuity, and there is much which must be acknowledged as flowing from a vigorous intellect, and a fervid, and poetical imagination. 'Ihis latter tendency of his genius is at all times awake, and from which may be inferred his taste for metaphor, and love of colouring, so conspicuous in his 8 Lifts prefixed to new edition of "The 1-asi Bitttell of the Jbule." ZACHARY BOYD. 305 writings. He has great fertility of explication, amounting often to diftiiseuess, and, in many cases, it would have been well had he known where to have paused. With extensive powers of graphic delineation, he is an instructive and interesting writer, though dwelling too much upon minute circumstances. He seems naturally to have been a man of an agreeable temperament, and as a con- sequence, at times, blends, with the subject on which he dilates, a dash of his own good nature, in some humorous and witty observations. His irony, often well-timed and well-turned, comes down with the force of illustration, and the sneer of sarcastic rebuke. A close observer of mankind and their actions, the judg- ment he forms respecting them, is that of a shrewd, sagacious, and penetrating mind. Like a skilful master of his profession, he discovers an intimate know- ledge of the manifold, and secret workings of the depravity of the human heart ; and though some of the disclosures of its wickedness may not be con- veyed in the most polished terms, we commend the honesty and simplicity of his heart, who had invariably followed the good old practice of a sincere and wholesome plainness. His prayers breathe the warm, and powerfid strains of a devotional mind, and a rich vein of feeling and piety runs through the matter of all his meditations. We have now to notice Mr Boyd in the character in which he has hitherto been best known to the world, namely, in that of a poet One of his most popular attempts to render himself serviceable to his country was in preparing a poetical version of the Book of Psalms for the use of the church. It had been previous to 1646 that he engaged in this, as the Assembly of 1647, when appointing a committee to examine Rous's version, which had been trans- mitted to them by the Assembly at Westminster, ' recommended them to avail themselves of the psalter of Rowallan, and of Mr Zachary Boyd, arid of any other poetical writers.' It is further particularly recommended to Mr Zachary Boyd to translate the other Scriptural Songs in metre, and to report his travails therein to the commission of that Assembly : that after their examination thereof they may send the same to the presbyteries to be there considei-ed until the next General Assembly. (Assembly Acts, Aug. 28, 1647.)' Mr Boyd complied with this request, as the Assembly, Aug. 10, 1648, 'recommends to Mr John Adamson aii(j Mr Thomas Crawfurd to revise the labours of Mr Zachary Boyd upon the other Scripture Songs, and to prepare a report thereof to the said com- mission for publick affairs,' who, it is probable, had never given in any ' report of their labours.' Of his version, Baillie had not entertained a high opinion, as he says, ' Our good friend, Mr Zachary Boyd, has put himself to a great deal ot piins and charges to make a psalter, but I ever warned him his hopes were groundless to get it received in our churches, yet the flatteries of his unadvised neighbours makes him insist in his fruitless design.' There seems to have been a party who did not undervalue Mr Boyd's labours quite so much as Baillie, and who, if possible, were determined to carry their point, as, according to Baillie's statement, ' The Psalms were often revised, and sent to presbyteries,' and , ' had it not been for some who had more regard than needed to Mr Zachary Boyd'a psalter, I think they (Rous's version) had passed through in the end of last Assembly ; but these, with almost all the references from the former Assemblies, were remitted to the next.' On 23d November, 1649, Rous's version, revised and improved, was sanctioned by the commission with authority of the General Assembly, and any other discharged from being used in the churches, or its families. Mr Boyd was thus deprived of the honour to which he aspired with some degree of zeal, and it must have been to himself and friends, a source of considerable disappointment. " Among other works, he produced two volumes, under the title of ' Zion's Flowers, or Christian Poems for Spiritual! Edification,' and it is ihese which i. 2 a 306 ZACHARY BOYD. arc usually shown as his bible, and have received that designation. These volumes consist of a collection of poems on select subjects in Scripture history, such as that of Josiah, Jephtha, David and Goliah, &c. rendered into the drama* tic form, in which various ' speakers ' are introduced, and where the prominent facts of the Scripture narrative are brought forward, and amplified. We have a pretty close parallel to these poems, in the '* Ancient Mysteries " of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in the sacred dramas of some modern writers." The preceding criticism and facts which we have taken the liberty to borrow from Mr Neil, 1 form an able and judicious defence of the memory of this distin- guished man. As some curiosity, however, may reasonably be entertained respecting compositions which excited so much vulgar and ridiculous misrepre- sentation, we shall make no apology for introducing some specimens of Mr Jioyd's poetry both of that kind which seems to have been dictated when his Pegasus was careering through " the highest heaven of invention," and of that other sort which would appear to have been conceived while the sacred charger was canter- ing upon the mean soil of this nether world, which it sometimes did, 1 must confess, very much after the manner of the most ordinary beast of burden. The following Morning Hymn for Christ, selected from his work entitled, " The English Academie,'' will scarcely fail to convey a respectful impression of the wriier : O Day Spring from on high, O, of all lights the light, Cause pass away our night; The Light that is most true, Clear first our morning sky, Now banish thou our night, And after shine thou bright. And still our light renew. Of lights thou art the light, Of righteousness the sun ; Thy beams they are most bright, Through all the world they run. The day thou hast begun Thou wilt it clearer make; We hope to see this Sun High in our Zodiak. O make thy morning dew To fall without all cease ; Do thou such favour show As unto Gideon's fleece. O do thou never cease To make that dew to fall The dew of grace and peace, And joys celestial. This morning we do call Upon thy name divine, That thou among us all Cause thine Aurora shine. Let shadows all decline, And wholly pass away, That light which is divine, May bring to us our day. A day to shine for aye, A day that is most bright, A day lh.it never may Be folloiixtl with a night. Thy 1'acc now to us show () son of God most dear; O Morning Star, most true, Make thou our darkness clear. Nothing at all is here, That with thee may compare ; O unto us draw near, And us thy children spare ! Thy mercies they are rare, If they were understood; Wrath due to us thou bare, And for us shed thy blood. Like beasts they are most rude, Whom reason cannot move Thou most perfytely good, Entirely for to love. Us make mind things above, Even things that most txcoll ; Of thine untainted love, Give us the sacred seal. O that we light could see That shineth in thy i'ac! So. at the last, should we From glory go to grace. Within thy sacred place Is only true content, When God's seen face to face, Above the firmament. 1 Life of Zachary Boyd, prefixed to the new Edition of his "Last Battellof the Soule. JAMES BROWN. 307 O that our hours were spent, Among the sons of men, To praise the Omnipotent, Amen, yea, and Amen ! The ludicrous passages are not many in number. The following is one which Pennant first presented to the world ; being the soliloquy of Jonah within the whale's belly ; taken from " The Flowers of Zion : Here apprehended I in prison ly ; What goods will ransom my captivity ? What house is this, where's neither coal nor candle, Where I nothing but guts of fishes handle? I and my table are both here within, Where day neere dawned, where sunne did never shine, The like of this on earth man never saw, A living man within a monster's maw. Buried under mountains which are high and steep, Plunged under waters hundreth lathoms deep. Not so was Noah in his house of tree, Fur through a window he the light did see ; hee sailed above the highest waves a wonder; I and my boat are all the waters under; Hee in his ark might goe and also come. But 1 sit still in such a straitened roome As is most uncouth, head and feet together, Among such grease as would a thousand smother. 1 find 110 way now for my shrinking hence, But heere to lie and die for mine offence ; Eight prisoners were in Noah's hulk together Comfortable they were, each one to other. Jn all the earth like unto mee is none, Far from all living, I heere lye alone, Where I entombed in melancholy sink, Choakt, suffocal, &c, And it is strange that, immediately after this grotesque description of his situa- tion, Pegasus again ascends, and Jonah begins a prayer to God, conceived in a fine strain of devotion. BROWN, JAMES, a traveller and scholar of some eminence, was the son of James Brown, M. D. who published a translation of two " Orations of Isocrates," without his name, and who died in 1733. The subject of this article was born at Kelso, May 23d, 1709, and was educated at Westminster School, where he made great proficiency in the Latin and Greek classics. In the year 1722. when less than fourteen years of age, he accompanied his father to Constanti- nople, where, having naturally an aptitude for the acquisition of languages, he made himself a proficient in Turkish, modern Greek, and Italian. On his re- turn in 1725, he added the Spanish to the other languages which he had already mastered. About 1732, he was the means of commencing the publication of the London Directory, a work of vast utility in the mercantile world, and which has since been imitated in almost every considerable town in the empire. After havino- laid the foundation of this undertaking, he transferred his interest in it to Mr Henry Kent, a printer in Finch-Lane, Cornhill, who carried it on for many years, ai:d eventually, through its means, acquired a fortune and an estate. In 1741, Brown entered into an engagement with twenty-four of the principal merchants in London, to act as their chief agent in carrying on a trade, through Russia, with Persia. Having travelled to that country by the Wolga and the 31)8 JOHN BROWN. Crispian Sea, he established a factory at Reshd, where he continued nearly four years. During this time, he travelled in state to the camp of the famous Kouli Khan, with a letter which had been transmitted to him by George II. for that monarch. He also rendered himself such a proficient in the Persic language, as to be able, on his return, to compile a copious dictionary and grammar, with many curious specimens of Persic literature, which, however, was never published. A sense of the dangerous situation of the settlement, and his dissatisfaction with some of his employers, were the causes of his return ; and his remonstrances on these subjects were speedily found to be just, by the factory being plundered of property to the amount of L.80,000, and a period being put to the Persian trade. From his return in 1746 to his death, which took place in his house at Stoke Newington, November 30, 1788, he appears to have lived in retirement upon his fortune. In the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine, he is charac- terised as a person of strict integrity, unaffected piety, and exalted but unosten- tatious benevolence. BROWN, JOHN, author of the "Self-Interpreting Bible," and many popular religious works, was born in the year 1722 at Carpow. a village in the parish of Abernethy and county of Perth, His father, for the greatest part of his lii'e, followed the humble occupation of a weaver, and was entirely destitute of the advantages of regular education, but, nevertheless, seems to have been a man of superior intelligence and worth, and even to have possessed some portion of that zeal in the pursuit of knowledge, and that facility in acquiring it without the ordi- nary helps, which his son so largely inherited. In consequence of the circum- stances of his parents, John Brown was able to spend but a very limited time at school in acquiring the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. " One month," he has himself told us, " without his parent's allowance, he bestowed upon Latin." His thirst for knowledge was intense, and excited him even at this early period to extraordinary diligence in all departments of study, but particularly to religious culture. The strong direction of his mind from the be- ginning to scholarship in general, and to that kind of it more closely connected with divinity in particular, seems to have early suggested to his mother the pos- sibility of his one day finding scope for the indulgence of his taste in the service of the church, and made her often picture, in the visions of maternal fondness, the day when she should, to use her own homely expression, " see the crows 11 y- ing over her bairn's kirk." About the eleventh year of his age he was deprived by death of his father, and soon after of his mother, and was himself reduced, by four successive attacks of fever, to a state which made it probable that he was about speedily to join his parents in the grave. But having recovei-ed from this illness, he had the good fortune to find a friend and protector in John Ogilvie, a shepherd venerable for age, and eminent for piety, who fed his flock among the neighbouring mountain?-. This worthy individual was an elder of the parish of Abernethy, yet, though a person of intelligence and religion, was so destitute of education as to be unable even to read a circumstance which may appear strange to these accustomed to hear of the universal diffusion of elementary education among the Scottish peasantry, but which is to be accounted for in this case, as in that of the elder Brown, by the disordered state of all the social institutions in Scotland previous to the close of the seventeenth century. To supply his own deficiency, Ogilvie was glad to engage young Brown to assist him in tending his flock, and read to him during the intervals of comparative inaction and repose which his occupa- tion afforded. To screen themselves from the storm and the heat, they built n /ittle lodge among the hills, and to this their mountain tabernacle (long after pointed out under this name by the peasants) they frequently repaired to cele- JOHN BROWN. 309 brate their pastoral devotions. Often " the wilderness and the solitary place were glad for them, and the desert rejoiced even with joy and singing." Ere long it happened that Ogilvie retired from his occupation as a shepherd, and settled in the town of Abernethy. In consequence of this change, young Brown entered the service of a neighbouring farmer, who maintained a more numerous establishment than his former friend. This step he laments as having been followed by much practical apostasy from God, and showed itself in a sensi- ble decline of religious attainments, and a general lukewannness in religious duty. Still, however, during the season of backsliding which he himself saw reason thus to deplore, his external character was remarkably distinguished by many virtues, and especially by the rare and truly Christian grace of meekness. In the year 1733, four ministers of the Church of Scotland, among whom was 3Ir 3Ioncrieff of Abernethy, declared a secession from its judicatures, alleging as their reasons for taking this step the following list of grievances ; " The suf- ferance of error without adequate censure ; the infringement of the rights of the Christian people in the choice and settlement of ministers under the law of patronage ; the neglect or relaxation of discipline ; the restraint of ministerial freedom in opposing mal-administration, and the refusal of the prevailing party to be reclaimed." To this body our young shepherd early attached himself, and ventured to conceive the idea of one day becoming a shepherd of souls in that connection. He accordingly prosecuted his studies with increasing ardour and diligence, and began to attain considerable knowledge of Latin and Greek. These acquisitions he made entirely without aid from others, except that he was able occasionally to snatch an hour when the flocks were folded at noon, in order to seek the solution of such difficulties as his unaided efforts could not master, from two neighbouring clergymen the one Mr Moncrieff of Abernethy, who has just been mentioned as one of the founders of the Secession, and the other Mr Johnston of Arngask, father of the late venerable Dr Johnston of North-Leith ; both of whom were very obliging and communicative, and took great interest in promoting the progress of the studious shepherd-boy. An anecdote has been preserved of this part of his life and studies which deserves to be mentioned. He had now acquired so much knowledge of Greek as encouraged him to hope that he might at length be prepared to reap the richest of all rewards which classical learning could confer on him, the capacity of reading, in the original tongue, the blessed New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Full of this hope, he became anxious to possess a copy of the invaluable volume. One night, accord- ingly, having folded his flocks in safety, and his fellow-shepherd, whose senti- ments towards him were now those of friendship and veneration, having under- taken to discharge his pastoral duties for the succeeding day, he set out on a midnight-journey to St Andrews, a distance of twenty-four miles. Having reached his destination in the morning, he repaired straightway to the nearest bookseller, and asked for a copy of the Greek New Testament The master of the shop, though, situated as he was in a provincial Scottish University, he must have been accustomed to hear such books inquired for by youths whose appear- ance and habiliments were none of the most civilized, was nevertheless somewhat astonished by such an application from so unlikely a person, and was rather disposed to taunt him with its presumption. Meanwhile a party of gentlemen, said to have been professors in the university, entered the shop, and having un- derstood the matter, questioned the lad about his employment and studies. After hearing his tale, one of them desired the bookseller to bring the volume, who accordingly produced it, and throwing it down upon the table, " Boy," said he, " read that book, and you shall have it for nothing." The offer was too good to be rejected, and yo'ung Brown, having acquitted himself to the adiuira- JOHN BROWN. tion of his judges, carried oft* his cheaply-purchased Testament in triumph, and, ere the evening arrived, was studying it in the midst of his flock upon the hills of Abernethy. His extraordinary acquisitions about this time subjected him to a suspicion, which was more generally entertained than would now appear credible, that lie received a seci'et aid from the enemy of man, upon the pledge of his own soul. It was probably in consequence of the annoyance he experienced on this account, that he abandoned the occupation of a shepherd, and undertook that of pedlar or travelling-merchant. This mode of life was once of much greater importance and higher esteem in Scotland than at present, when the facilities of communi- cation between all parts of the country and the greater seats of commerce have been multiplied to such a degree, and was often pursued by persons of great intelligence and respectability. Its peculiar tendency to imbue the mind witli a love of nature, and form it to a knowledge of the world, have been finely illus- trated by a great poet of our day: nor is the Scottish pedlar of the Excursion, though certainly somewhat too metaphysical and liberal, in every respect the un- natural character which it has been represented. It will not, however, be considered very surprising when we say, that young Brown did not shine in his new profession. During his mercantile peregrinations, which lay chiefly in the interior parts of Fife and Kinrosshire, he made it a rule to call at no house of which the family had not the character of being religious and given to reading. When he was received into any such dwelling, his first care was to have all the books it could furnish collected together, among which, if he did but light upon a new one, with avidity he fell to the literary feast, losing in the appetite of the soul, the hunger of the body, and in the traffic of knowledge forgetting the mer- chandise of pedlar's wares. It is related, and may well be believed, that the contents of his pack, on his return to head quarters from one of his expeditions, used to present a lively image of chaos, and that he was very glad to express lire obligations to any neat-handed housewife who would take the arrangement of them upon herself. Many a time and oft was he prudently reminded of the propriety of attending more to his business, and not wasting his time on what did not concern him till his monitors at last gave up the case in despair, and wisely shaking their heads, pronounced him " good for nothing but to be a scholar." Soon after the close of the Rebellion of 1745, during which period he served as a volunteer in the regiment of militia raised by the county of Fife, in behalf of the government, he resolved to undertake the more dignified duties of school- master. He established himself in the year 1 747 at Gairney Bridge, a village in the neighbourhood of Kinross, and there laid the foundation of a school which subsisted for a considerable time, and, fifteen years after, was taught by another individual whose name has also become favourably known to the world whose lot, however, was not like his predecessor's, to come to the grave " like a shock of corn fully ripe," but to wither prematurely " in the morn and liquid dew of youth," the tender and interesting young poet, Michael Bruce. During Mr Brown's incumbency, which lasted for two years, this school was remarkably suc- cessful, and attracted scholars from a considerable distance. He afterwards taught for a year and a half another school at Spittal, in the congregation of Linton, under Mr James Mair. The practical character of his talents, the accuracy of his learning, the intimate experience which, as a self-taught scholar, he must have had of elementary difficulties, and the best mode of solving them, and the conscientiousness and assiduity which always formed distinguishing features o/ his character must have peculiarly qualified him for the discharge of his present duties. While active in superintending the studies of others, he did not relax in the prosecution of his own. On the contrary, his ardour seems to have led him JOHN BROWN. 311 into imprudent extremes of exertion. He would commit to memory fifteen chap- ters of the Bible as an evening exercise after the labours of the day, and after s'icli killing efforts, allow himself but four hours of repose. To this excess of exertion he was probably stimulated by the near approach of the period to which he had long looked forward with trembling hope the day which was to reward tlie toils and trials of his various youth, by investing him with the solemn func- tion of an ambassador of Christ During the vacations of his school, he was now engaged in the regular study of philosophy and divinity under the inspection of tiie Associate Synod, and the superintendence of the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, and James Fisher, two of the original founders, and principal lights of the Secession church. At length, in the year 1751, having completed his preparatory course of study, and approved himself on trial before the Associate Presbytery of Edin- burgh, he was licensed by that reverend body, at Dalkeith, to preach the gospel in their society. He entered upon the sacred work with deep impressions of its solemn responsibilities. He has himself mentioned that his mind, immediately previous to his receiving authority to preach, was very vividly affected by that awful text in Isaiah vi. S), 10, " He said, Go and tell this people, Hear ye in- deed, but understand not ; see ye indeed, but perceive not ; make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert and be healed." He had not been long a probationer, when he re- ceived two nearly simultaneous calls to the settled discharge of ministerial duty ; one from the congregation of Stow, a village in the shire of Edinburgh, and the other from that of Haddington, the principal town in the county of that name. The Presbytery of Edinburgh, within whose bounds both congregations were in- cluded, and which had therefore, according to the Presbyterian constitution, the right of deciding between their competing claims, submitted the matter to his own discretion. His choice was determined to Haddington, partly by his feel- ings of sympathy with that congregation for disappointments it had already ex- perienced, and partly by his modest estimate of his own qualifications, to which he felt the smaller of the two charges more suitable. Over this congregation therefore he was finally ordained pastor in the month of June, 1751. It de- serves to be mentioned, however, that he continued regularly to visit and examine the congregation of Stow until it was supplied with a regular minister. To the duties of the sacred office he devoted himself with the most zealous and laborious industry. The smallness of his congregation enabled him at once to undertake the widest range of ministerial duty, and to execute it with the great- est minuteness and accuracy. Besides regularly preaching four discourses every Sunday during the summer, and three during winter in his own place of worship, and occasionally in the country during the week, he visited all his people an- nually in his pastoral capacity, and carried them twice in the same period through a course of public catechetical examinations. He was very assiduous in his visits to the sick and the afflicted, and that not merely to those of his own congrega- tion, but to all, of every denomination, who desired his services. The peculiar characteristic of his manner of address on all these occasions, public and private, was an intense solemnity and earnestness, which extorted attention even from the scorner, and was obviously the genuine expression of his own overwhelming sense of the reality and importance of the message. " His grave appearance," says a late English divine, who had attended his ministry for some time, " his solemn, weighty, and energetic manner of speaking, used to affect me very much. Certainly his preaching was close, and his address to the conscience pungent Like his Lord and Master, he spoke with authority and hallowed pathos, having tasted the sweetness and felt the power of what he delivered." To the same 312 JOHN BROWN. effect, the celebrated David Hume, having been led to hear him preach on one occasion at North 13er\vick, remarked, " 'lhat old man preaches as if Christ were at his elbow.'' Except for his overawing seriousness, and occasionally a melt- ing sweetness in his voice, it does not appear that his delivery was by any means attractive. " It was my mercy," he sa\s, with characteristic modesty, that " the Lord, who had given me some other talents, withheld from me a popular delivery, so that though my discourses were not disrelished by the serious, so far rs 1 heard, yet they were not so agreeable to many hearts as those of my brethren, which it was a pleasure to me to see possessed of that talent which the Lord, to restrain my pride, had denied to me." His labours were not in vain in the Lord. The members of his congregation, the smallness of which he often spoke of as a mercy, seem to have been enabled to walk, in a great measure, suitably to their profession and their privileges ; and he had less experience than most ministers of that bitterest of all trials attached to a conscientious pastor's situa- tion scandalous irregularities of practice among those in regard to whom he can have no greater joy than to see them walking in the truth. In ecclesiastical policy, he was a staunch Presbyterian and Seceder in the original sense of the term, as denoting an individual separated, not from the constitution of the esta- blished church, either as a church or as an establishment, but from the policy and control of the predominant party in her judicatures. At the unhappy division of the Secession church in 1745, commonly known by the name of the Breach, on the question of making refusal of the burgess oath a term of communion, though personally doubtful of the propriety of a Seceder's swearing the oath in question, he attached himself to that party, who, from declining peremptorily to pi'onounce it unlawful, obtained the popular appellation of Burghers, justly considering that a difference of opinion on this point was by no means of sufficient impor- tance to break the sacred bond of Christian fellowship. His public prayers were liberal and catholic, and he always showed the strongest affection for gospel ministers and true Christians of every name. In an unpublished letter to a noble lady of the episcopal communion, he expresses his hope " that it will afford her a delightful satisfaction to observe how extensive and important the agree- ment, and how small the difference of religious sentiments, between a professedly staunch Presbyterian and a truly conscientious Episcopalian, if they both cor- dially believe the doctrine of God's free grace reigning to men's eternal life, through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ our Lord." He made a point of regularly attending and acting in the church courts, though he avoided taking any leading part in the management of ecclesiastical business. The uniformity and universality of his habits of personal devotion were remarkable. Of him it might well be said, that he walked with God, and that in God he, as it were to his own consciousness, lived, and moved, and had his being. He had acquired a holy skill in deriving, from every scene of nature, and every incident of life, occasions of Christian thought, impulses of Christian feeling, motives to Christian duty. His "Christian Journal" seems to have bee i literally the picture of his daily course and association of ideas, and the beautiful motto he has prefixed to it, to have been the expression of his own experience : "The ear that is ever attentive to God never hears a voice that speaks not of Him ; the soul, whose eye is intent on him, never sees an atom in which she doth not discern her Best Beloved.'' He could hold sweet communion with his heavenly Father in the most terrible displays of His majesty, not less than in the softer manifestations of His benignity. One day, hearing a tremendous crash of thunder, he smilingly exclaimed to those around, " That is the low whisper of my God." His seasons of prayer, stated and special, secret and domestic, were frequent beyond the rules of any prescribed routine. Oftn was he overheard, in the nightly and the JOHN BROWN. 313 morning watches, conversing with his God in prayer and praise, remembering ais 31aker upon his bed, and having his song with him in the night. Amidst the ordinary details of life, the devout aspirations of the heart Mere continually breaking forth in ejaculations of thanksgiving and holy desire: his conversation habitually dwelt on heavenly things: or, if secular objects were introduced, he would turn them with sanctifying ingenuity into divine emblems and pirituaJ analogies. His whole mind and life seemed impregnated with devotion, and all his days formed, as it were, one Sabbath. The extent of his pecuniary liberality was surprising. He considered it a binding duty on every individual to devote at least the tenth part of his revenue to pious uses; and out of an income which, during the greater part of his life, amounted to only forty pounds a year, and never exceeded fifty, and from which he had a numerous family to support, he generally exceeded that proportion. He distributed his benevolence with strict attention to the Saviour's command, " Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." He was aware of the importance of conversation among the various means of doing good, and, though he laments his own " sinful weakness and unskilfulness in pushing religious discourse," he was too conscientious to neglect the oppor- tunities which presented themselves of promoting, in this way, the glory of God and the best interests of men. He made it a distinct principle never to leave any company in which he might be placed, without saying something which, by the blessing of God, might promote their spiritual good. It is related, that, having accidentally met Ferguson the poet walking in Haddington church-yard, and being struck with his pensive appearance, he modestly addressed him, and offered him certain serious advices, which deeply affected him at the time, and doubtless had their share in exciting and promoting those terrible convictions which latterly overwhelmed the poet's mind, and in which it may perhaps be hoped there was something better than " the sorrow that worketh death." He knew, however, that there was a certain discretion to be used in such cases, and a selection to be made of the " mollia tempora fandi," the seasons when words are " fitly spoken." Of this, the following anecdote is an example : Having occasion to cross the ferry between Leith and Kinghorn, with a Highland gentle- man as his fellow-passenger, he was much grieved to hear his companion fre- quently take the name of God in vain, but restrained himself from taking any notice of it in the presence of the rest of the company. On reaching land, how- ever, observing the same gentleman walking alone upon the beach, he stepped up, and calmly reminded him of the offence he had been guilty of, and the law of God which forbids and condemns it. The gentleman received the reproof with expressions of thanks, and declared his resolution to attend to it in future. " But," added the choleric Celt, " had you spoken to me so in the boat, I be- lieve I should have run you through." It will not be supposed, that, after having given himself with such ardour to study in circumstances of comparative disadvantage, he neglected to avail him- self of the more favourable opportunities he now enjoyed of extending and con- solidating his knowledge. 13y a diligent improvement of the morning hours, and a studious economy of time throughout the day, he rarely spent fewer than twelve hours of the twenty-four in his study. He possessed extraordinary patience of the physical labour connected with hard study. No degree of toil in the way of reading, or even of writing, seemed to daunt or to fatigue him. Though he never enjoyed the assistance of an amanuensis, he transcribed most of his works several times with his own hand: and even without a view to the press, he more than once undertook the same fatigue for the convenience of pri- vate individuals. In this way at the request of the Countess of Huntingdon, he 314 JOHN BROWN. copied out his System of Divinity, before its publication, for the use of her Lady- ship's theological seminary in Wales. He had remarkable facility in the acqui- sition of languages; and of this species of knowledge, the key to every other, lie possessed an extraordinary amount Besides the three commonly called the learned tongues, he was acquainted with Arabic, Syriac, Persic, and Ethiopie, and, of the modern languages, with the French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and German. In the various departments of real as distinguished from verbal know- ledge, his reading was very wide in range and various in subject, liis favourite pursuits were history and divinity; but every subject, which more nearly or more remotely bore on the literature of his profession, he considered worthy of his attention. He afterwards saw reason to repent of the wideness of his aims in this respect, and to regret " the precious time and talents," to use his own words, " he had vainly squandered in the mad attempt to become a universal scholar." His reading, though thus extensive, was at the same time very exact and accurate. In order to render it so, he in many cases adopted the tedious and laborious method of compiling regular abridgments of important and volammous books. Among the works he thus epitomized, were Judge Blackstone's Commentaries, and the Ancient Universal History. In the month of September 1753, about two years after his ordination, 3Ii Brown married Miss Janet Thomson, daughter of Mr John Thomson, merchant at Musselburgh. For eighteen years he enjoyed in her a " help meet '' for him in his Christian course, and at the end of that period he surrendered her, as he himself expresses it. "to her first and better Husband." They had several chil- dren, of whom only t\vo survived their mother John and Ebenezer, both of whom their father had the satisfaction before his death of introducing as ministers into the church of Christ, the former at Whitburn, and the latter at Inverkeithing. Two years after the death of his first wife, which took place in 1 77 1 , he was married a second time to Miss Violet Croumbie, daughter of Mr William Croumbie, merchant, Stenton, East Lothian, who survived him for more than thirty years, and by whom he left at his death four sons and two daughters, of whom only the half are now alive. In his domestic economy and discipline, 31r Brown laboured after a strict fidelity to his ordination vow, by which he promised to rule well his own house. His notions in regard to the authority of a husband and a father were very high, and all the power which as such he thought himself to possess, was faithfully employed in maintaining both the form and the power of godliness. In the year 1753, Mr Brown, for the first time, appeared as an author. His first publication was entitled " An Help for the Ignorant, being an Essay towards an Easy Explication of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and Catechisms, compiled for the use of the young ones of his own congregation." In addition to this, he published, six years after, two short catechisms one introductory to, the other explanatory of, the Shorter Catechism. All these publications have been very extensively usefuL In 1765, he published, what was at the time by far the most popular and successful of his works, entitled " The Christian Jour- nal, or Common Incidents Spiritual Instructors." This work, though it has some of the literary defects which, on such a subject, might have been expected from an author so circumstanced, such as the occasional indulgence of unrefined images, the excess of detail in tracing the analogies, and a certain monotonous rhythm of style, in many cases scarcely distinguishable from blank verse never- theless displays an extraordinary richness and ingenuity of fancy, and in many instances rises into a most impressive and heart-warming eloquence. In 17G(> he published a History of the Rise and Progress of the Secession, and the yeai following, a series of Letters on the Constitution, Discipline, and Government ol JOHN BROWN. 315 the Christian Church. These tracts were followed by his Sacred Tropology, the first of a series of works which he designed for the purpose of giving a clear, comprehensive, and regular view of the figures, types, and predictions of Scripture. The second and third parts were published in 1781. In the year 17G8, in consequence of the death of the Rev. John Swanston of Kinross, Professor of Divinity under the Associate Synod, Mr Brown was elected to the vacant chair. The duties of this important office he discharged with great ability and exemplary diligence and success. His public prelections were di- rected to the two main objects, first, of instructing his pupils in the science of Christianity, and secondly, of impressing their hearts with its power. The sys- tem of Divinity which he was led, in the course of his professional duty, to com- pile, and which was afterwards published, is perhaps the one of all his works which exhibits most striking proofs of precision, discrimination, and enlargement of thought ; and is altogether one of the most dense, and at the same time per- spicuous views which has yet been given of the theology of the Westminster Con- fession. The charge which he took of those committed to his care, was not en- tirely of the 'ex cathedra' description. The situation of the Hall in a small provincial town, and the manners of the age, combined with his just sense of the importance of the students' private exertions and personal habits, enabled him to exercise a much more minute and household superintendance over the young men under his direction. Frequently in the morning he was accustomed to go his rounds among their lodgings, to assure himself that they were usefully employing " the golden hours of prime." The personal contact between professor and pupils was thus remarkably close and unbroken, and hence we find that among those who can recollect their attendance on the Divinity Hall at Haddington, the interest with which every mind looks back to the scenes and seasons of eai-ly study has a greater character of individuality, and is associated with minuter re- collections than we generally meet with after so long a lapse of years. The same year in which he was elected to the theological chair he preached and published a very powerful sermon on Religious Steadfastness, in which he divells at considerable length on the religious state of the nation, and expresses violent apprehensions at the visible diffusion and advance of what he called lati- tudinarianism, and what we of this tolerant age would term liberality of reli- gious sentiment He likewise this year gave to the world one of the most elaborate, and cei'tainly one of the most valuable of all his writings, the Dic- tionary of the Holy Bible. For popular use, it is unquestionably the most suita- ble work of the kind which yet exists, containing the results of most extensive and various reading both in the science and in the literature of Christianity, given without pretension or parade, and with a uniform reference to practical utility. In 177 1, the Honourable and Reverend Mr Shirley, by command of the Countess cf Huntingdon, applied to Mr Brown for his opinions on the grand subject of justification, in view of a conference to be held on this question with Mr Wes- ley and his preachers. This application gave occasion to a long and animated correspondence with that noble lady, (a correspondence which, in consequence of our author's modesty, remained a secret till after his death,) and to a series of articles from his pen on the doctrine of justification, which appeared, from time to time, in the Gospel Magazine and Theological Miscellany, between the years 1770 and 1776. In the same year he was led, by a desire to contribute to the yet better instruction of his students, to form the design of composing a manual of church history on a general and comprehensive plan. It was to consist of three parts, " the first comprehending a general view of transactions relating to the church from the birth of our Saviour to the present time; the second con- taining more fully the histories of the Reformed British Churches in England, 316 JOHN BROWN. Scotland, Ireland, and America; the third to comprehend the histories of the Walderises and the Protestant churches of Switzerland, France, Holland, Ger many, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Hungary." Of these he completed the two former, his General History having been published in 1771, and his His:<>ry of the British Churches in the beginning of 17 84. These form very useful popular compends, though destitute of high historical authority. The history t-f the Uritish Churches, as a work of original research, is much superior to the m< ro general compilation, which is little more than an abridgment of Mosheint, written in a more fervid spirit than the latter is accustomed to display, llr Brown's next publication appeared in 1775, and was an edition of the metrical " Psalms, with notes exhibiting the connection, explaining the sense, and for directing and animating the devotion." In 1778 he gave to the world the great work on which his reputation is chiefly founded, "The Self-Interpreting Bible," the object of which is to condense, within a manageable compass, all the information which an ordinary reader may find necessary for attaining an intelligent and practical knowledge of the sacred oracles. 'Hie h'rst publication of this work was attended with considerable difficulties, in consequence of the claim of the king's printers to the exclusive right of printing the authorized ver- sion of the Scriptures, whether accompanied or not with illustrative matter. This claim, however, having been set aside, the work was at length given to the world in 1778, and received Mith a high and gradually increasing and still un- exhausted approbation. The same year he published a small tract entitled " the Oracles of Christ Abominations of Antichrist," and four years after, his " Letters on Toleration:" strenuously maintaining the unlawfulness of tolerating by au- thority a false religion in a professedly Christian country. These publications originated in the universal sentiment of alarm entertained by the evangelical presbyterians of Scotland, both within and without the establishment, in conse- quence of the proposed abolition of the penal code against the Roman Catholics. In 1781, besides his works on the types and prophecies formerly referred to, he published a sermon on the " Duty of Raising up Spiritual Children unto Christ," preached partly at Whitburn, and partly after his son Ebenezer's ordi- nation at Inverkeithing. He likewise, in the course of the same year, wrote a pamphlet in defence of the re-exhibition of the testimony, and a collection of the biographies of eminent divines, under the name of the " Christian Student and Pastor." This was the first of a series of similar compilations intended as illustrations and examples of practical religion, and was followed in 17bl by the "Young Christian," and in 1783 by the " Lives of thirteen Eminent Private Christians.'' In 1783, he published a small " Concordance to the Bible." 'Ihe year following, he received an invitation from the reformed Dutch church in America, to become their Professor of Divinity, which he declined, and modestly kept secret And, in 1785, he concluded his career as an author, by a pam- phlet against the travelling of the Mail on the Lord's-day a day for the obser- vance of which, in the strictest degree of sanctity, he always showed himself peculiarly jealous, not only abstaining himself, but prohibiting his family, from speaking on that day on any worldly affair, even on such as related to what may be called the secularities of religion and the church. The tracts published by him in periodical works, along with his " Letters on Gospel Preaching and the Behaviour of Ministers," were collected after his death, and published under the title of "Remains." '1 hroughout his writings, Mr Brown's uniform aim was general utility ; per- sonal emolument formed no part of his object, and certainly very little of his attainment, as the whole profit accruing to himself from his voluminous, and in many cases, successful works, amounted to only 40. Without possessing much JOHN BROWN, M.D. C17 orig-inal genius, but on the other hand too ready, it may be, to submit the free- dom of his mind to system and authority, he was endowed with a strong aptitude for acquisition, and great power of arrangement, a sound and generally sober judgment, and a rich and vivid frncy, though united with a defective, or rather, perhaps, an uncultivated taste. The selection of subjects, and general concep- tion of almost every one of them, are very happy, and in m ny cases the execu- tion proves his high endowments for the task he undertook. The time now drew near that he should die. For some years previous, he had been greatly annoyed with a gradual failure, at once in the bodily power of digestion and the mental faculty of memory the symptoms of a constitution fairly worn out by the intense and incessant labours to which it hud been sub- jected. In the beginning of 1787, his complaints increased in stich an alarming degree, accompanied by a general and extreme debility, that he found it neces- sary to abandon the pulpit. During the months of spring, he lived in a con- tinual state of earnest and active preparation for the great change he was about to undergo. lie expired on the 19th June, and on the 24th his remains were followed to their place of repose in Haddington church-yard, by nearly the whole inhabitants of the town, and a large concourse of his friends and brethren from a distance. At the first meeting of the Associate Synod after his decease, "the Synod," as their minute beai-s, " unanimously agreed to take this oppor- tunity of testifying their respect to the memory of the Rev. John Brown, their late Professor, whose eminent piety, fervent zeal, extensive charity, and un- wearied diligence in promoting the interests of religion, will be long remem- bered by this court, especially by those members of it who had the happiness of studying divinity under his inspection." BROWN, JOHN, M. D. founder of what is termed the Bruaonian system in medicine, and one of the most eccentric and extraordinary men of his time, was a native of the parish of Bunkle, in Berwickshire, where he was bora, in the year 1735, or, as others assert, in 1737. Though only the son of a day-la- bourer, he contrived to obtain an excellent classical education at the school of Dunse, which was then taught by Mr William Cruickshank, one of the most celebrated teachers that Scotland has produced. The genius and application of Brown were alike so great, that, at an age when the most of children are only beginning their letters, he was far advanced in a knowledge of Latin. His studies, after some time, were broken oft" in consequence of the inability of his father to maintain him at school. He was bound apprentice to the gloomy and monotonous craft of a weaver, which must have been peculiarly unsuitable to his lively faculties. However, he seems to have afterwards been enabled by the kindness of his teacher to renew his studies; and it is known that for this purpose he had employed himself on the harvest-field. His proficiency in the Latin recommended him, first to the situation of usher in the school, and after- wards to that of tutor in a neighbouring family. When about twenty years of age, he removed to Edinburgh, and entering the university, advanced so far in the study of divinity, as to deliver a discourse preparatory to commencing his trials before the presbytery. Brown, however, was not destined to be a mem her of this profession. Owing to some unexplained freak of feeling, he turned back from the very threshold, and for some years supported himself in the hum- ble capacity of a grinder in the university. His services in this capacity to the medical students introduced him to a knowledge of medicine, which he suddenly resolved to prosecute as a profession. His natural ardour of mind enabled bin- very speedily to master the necessary studies, in which lie was greatly assisted by the particular kindness and attention of Dr Cullen, then professor of medi- cine in the university. At one period, he acted as Latin secretary to this great 318 JOHN BROWN. man, with whom he afterwards quarrelled in the most violent manner. In 17 05, he married, and set up a house for the purpose of receiving medical students as boarders. But, his irregular and improvident conduct reduced him to bank- ruptcy in the short space of two years. A vacancy occurring in the High School, he became a candidate ; but being too proud of his real qualifications to think any other recommendation necessary, he was overlooked in favour of some child of patronage. It is said that, when his name, and his name alone, was presented to the eyes of the magistrates, they derisively asked who he was ; to which (Jullen, then separated in affection from his former pupil, is stated to have answered, with some real or affected hesitation " Why, sure, this can never be our Jock!'' Brown met with a similar repulse, on applying for the chair of theoretical medicine in the university. Vet, notwithstanding every discourage- ment from the great men of his own profession, this eccentric genius w;is press- ing on towards the completion of that peculiar system by which his name has been distinguished. His views were given to the world, in 1780, under the title " Elementa 3Iedicinas ;'> and he illustrated them further by lectures, which were attended, as a supernumerary course, by many of the regular students of the university. The Brunonian system simply consisted in the administration of a course of stimulants, instead of the so-called anti-phlogistic remedies, as a HUMUS of producing that change in the system which is necessary to work a cure. The idea was perhaps suggested by his own habits of life, which were unfortunately so very dissolute as to deprive him of all personal respect. He was, perhaps the only great drinker, who ever exulted in that degrading vice, as justified by philosophical principles. So far from concealing his practices, he used to keep a bottle of whiskey, and another of laudanum, upon the table before him ; and, throughout the course of the lecture, he seldom took fewer than three or four doses from each. In truth, Brown lived at a time when men of genius did not conceive it to be appropriate to their character as such, to conduct themselves with decency. Thus, a man who might have adorned the highest walks of society by his many brilliant qualities, was only fit for the company of the low- est and most despicable characters. He was a devout free-mason, but more for the sake of the conviviality to which it atlbrds so fatal an excuse, than for the more recondite and mysterious attractions (if any such exist) of the fraternity. He was the founder of a peculiar lodge in Edinburgh, called the " Ifoman Eagle," where no language but Latin was allowed to be spoken. One of his friends remarked with astonishment the readiness with which he could translate the technicalities and slang of masonry into this language, which, however he at all times spoke with the same fluency as his vernacular Scotch. It affords a lamentable view of the state of literary society in Edinburgh between the years 1780 and 1790, that this learned lodge was perhaps characterised by a deeper system of debauch than any other. In 1786, Brown removed to London, in order to push his fortune as a lecturer on his own system of medicine, which had already acquired no little fame. But the irregularity of his conduct, and the irascibility of his temperament, rendered all his hopes fruitless. He died at London, October 7, 1788, of a fit of apoplexy, being then little more than fifty years of age. His works have been collected and published by his son ; but, like the system which they explain, they are now forgotten. BROWN, JOHN, an ingenious artist, was the son of Samuel Brown, goldsmith and watch-maker at Edinburgh, where he was born in 1752. He received an excellent education, after the fashion of Scotland, and was early destined to take up the profession of a painter. Having formed a school friendship of no ordi- nary warmth with Mr David Erskine, son of Thomas Erskine of Cambo, he travelled with that yourg gentleman, in 1774, into Italy, where he was kindly JOHN BROWN. 319 received by Charles Erskine of the Rota, an eminent lawyer and prelate, the cousin ofhis companion. He immediately attached himself to the Academy, with a resolution to devote himself entirely to the arts. During the course of ten years residence in Italy, the pencil and crayon were ever in his hand, and the sublime thoughts of Raphael and Michael Angelo ever in his imagination. By continual practice, he obtained an elegance and correctness of contour, never eq lulled by any British artist ; but he unfortunately neglected the mechanism of the pallet till his taste was so refined, that Titian, and Marillo, and Corregio, made his heart sink within him whenever he touched the canvas. When he attempted to lay in his colours, the admirable correctness of his contour waa lost, and he had never self-sufficiency to persevere till it should be recovered in that tender evanescent outline which is so difficult to be attained even by the most eminent painters. He wished every thing important to be made out, and when it was made out, he found his work hard and disagreeable, like the first pictures painted by Raphael, and by all that preceded that wonderful artist. Brown, besides his genius for painting, possessed a high taste for music. His evenings in Italy were spent at the opera, and he penetrated deeply into the study of music as a science. At Rome Brown met with Sir William Young and Mr Townley, who, pleased with some of his pen and ink sketches, engaged him to accompany them to Sicily as a draughtsman. Of the antiquities of this island, he took several veiy fine views in pen and ink, exquisitely finished, yet still preserving the character and spirit of the buildings he intended to represent. It was the belief of one of Brown's Scottish patrons, that if he had gone to Berlin, he would have obtained the favour of Frederick the Great, on account of his extraordinary talents and refined personal character. A pious regard, however, for his parents, induced him to return to his native city, where, though universally beloved and admired, he found no proper field for the exertion of his abilities. Amongst the few persons of taste who afforded him their patron- age, was Lord Munboddo, who, with that liberality by which he was distinguished, gave him a general invitation to his elegant and convivial table, and employed him in making several pencil-drawings. He was also employed to draw pencil- heads of fifty of the more distinguished members of the Scottish Society of Anti- quaries, then just established ; of which he finished about twenty. Among other works which he produced at Edinburgh, were heads of Dr Blair, Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, Runciman, his friend and brother artist, Drs Cullen and Black, all of which were done in the most happy and characteristic manner. His talent in this line is described as having been very great. Amidst the col- lection which he had brought home to Edinburgh, was a portrait of the cele- brated Piranese, who, being unable to sit two moments in one posture, reduced his painter to the necessity of shooting him flying like a bat or a snipe. This rara avis was brought down by Brown at the first shot. In 1786, Brown was induced to remove to London, in order to prosecute, on a larger field, his profession as a portrait-draughtsman in black lead. He was here occasionally employed by Mr Townley, in drawing from his collection of Greek statues, a branch of art in which Brown is allowed to have greatly excell- ed. After some time spent in unremitting application, his health gave way, and he was recommended to try the benefit of a visit to his native country, by soa. On his passage from London to Leith, he was somehow neglected as he lay sick in his hammock, and, on his arrival he was found at the point of death. With much difficulty he was brought up to town, and laid on the bed of his friend Runciman, who had died not long before in the same place. Here he expired, September 5, 1 7 87, having only attained the age of thirty-live. 3l } WILLIAM LAWRENCE BROWN, D.D. BROWN, WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D. P., an eminent theological and miscellaneous writer, was born, January 7, 1755, at Utrecht, whore his father, the reverend William Brown, was minister to the English congregation. In 1757, his lather removed with his family to t>t Andrews, in order to undertake the duties of professor of ecclesiastical history ; and the subject of our nie.iunir, having- com- menced his education under his father's care, was placed successively at the grammar-school and university of that city, entering the hitter at the early age of twelve. His native abilities, favoured by the fostering care of his father, en- abled him, notwithstanding his immature years, to pass through his academical course with distinction; classical literature, logic, and ethics, being the branches of study to which he chiefly devoted his attention. After studying divinity for two years at St Andrews, he removed to Utrecht, where he prosecuted the same study, and also that of civil law. In 177S, having previously been licensed by the presbytery of St Andrews, he succeeded his uncle as minister ot' the English church at Utrecht ; a field of exertion too narrow for his abilities, but which he, nevertheless, cultivated with the same zeal and application which a con- scientious clergyman might be expected to bestow upon one more extensive. Such spare time as his duties left to him, he employed in attention to a few pupils whom he received into his house. He at the same time enlarged his range of study, and occasionally made excursions into France, Germany, and Switzerland. In 1786, he married his cousin, Anne Elizabeth Brown, by whom he had five sons and four daughters. The first literary effort of Mr Brown, was an essay on the origin of evil, written for a prize offered by the curators of the Holpian legacy at Utrecht, and which was adjudged the second honour among the essays of twenty-five competitors, that of being published at the expense of the trust. Soon after this, namely, in 1784, the university of St Andrews conferred upon him the degree of Doctor in Divinity. Dr Brown was successful in several other prize essays, two of which were published, under the titles of " An Essay on the Folly of Scepticism," London, 1788 ; and " An Essay on the Natural 1 quality of Man," Edinburgh, 1793. The latter took a more sober view of the subject than was generally adopted at the time of its publication ; and it accordingly became the means of introducing Dr Brown to the notice of the British govern- meiiL, Previously to the armed interposition of the Prussians in 1788, Dr Brown was exposed to so much annoyance on account of his attachment to the dynasty of Nassau, that he found it necessary to proceed to London, in quest of another iituation. The event alluded to, not only enabled him to retain his former office, but caused his elevation to a professorship, newly erected in the univer- sity of his native city, for moral philosophy and ecclesiastical history, lie un- fortunately was not allowed sufficient time to prepare the two elaborate courses of lectures required in this new situation ; and, by his extraordinary exertions to accomplish what was expected of him. laid the foundation of ail- ments, from which he never afterwards recovered. His inaugural discourse was published under the title of " Oratio de Religionis et Philosophies Societate et Concordia maxima Salutari." Two years afterwards, he was nominated rector of the university ; and on depositing his temporary dignity, he pronounced an "Oratio de Imaginatione in Vita? Institutione regenda," which was published in 1790. Though offered the Greek professorship at St Andrews, he continued in Utrecht, till the invasion of Holland by the French, in the beginning of 1795, when he was obliged to leave the country in an open boat, with his wife and five children, besides some other relations. Notwithstanding the severity 01 the season, the roughness of the weather, and the frail nature of the bark to which so many lives were committed, lie reached the English coast in safety. WILLIAM LAWRENCE BROWN, T>.D. 321 In London, to \vhii:h lie immediately proceeded, he met with a friendly re- ception from lord Auckland, to whom he had become known during his lord- ship's residence as ambassador at the Hague, and who now exerted himself t>< warmly in his favour, that he was, in the course of a few months, appointed t-i succeed Dr Campbell, as professor of divinity in the Marischal college, Aber- deen ; to which honourable appointment was soon after added, that of principal of the same college. We are informed by the writer of the life of Dr Brown, in the Ency- clopaedia Britannic*, that " this new professorship imposed upon him a very serious task, that of composing a course of theological lectures, extend- ing over five sessions. After a review of the different systems of religiou which lay claim to a divine origin, he discussed most amply the evidence* and doctrines of natural religion. He then proceeded to the evidences of re vealed religion, of which he gave a very full and learned view. 'Ihe christiar scheme foimed the next sut tect of an inquiry, in which the peculiar doc trines of Christianity were very extensively unfolded. Christian etlncs were also explained ; and it formed part of his original plan, to treat of all the great controversies that have agitated the religious world. This portion of the course was not, however, completed." Besides attending to the duties of his chair, and of his principality, Dr Brown officiated as one of the ministers of the West church in Aberdeen. A volume of his sermons appeared in 1803. He also occasionally attended the General Assembly, where his manly eloquence and impressive mode of speaking, caused him to be listened to with great re- spect, though he never arrived at the character of a leader. While discharging every public duty with zeal and efficacy, he did not neglect his favourite pur- suits of literature. In 1809, he published "Philemon, or the Progress of Virtue, a poem," Edinburgh, 2 vols. octavo; and in 1816, appeared his greatest literary effort, " An Essay on the Existence of a Supreme Creator," Aberdeen, 2 vols. octavo. The latter was the successful competing essay, among fifty, for Burnet's first prize of .1250; the second, of .400, being awarded to Dr Sunnier, afterwards bishop of Chester. Dr Brown also wrote a few pamphlets upon passing occurrences, political and otherwise ; and one or two articles in Lr.tin, relating to formalities in the university over which he presided. His last considerable work was " A Comparative View of Chris- tianity, and of the other Forms of Religion which ha existed, and still exist in the World, p.-.rticularly with regard to their Moral Tendency," Edinburgh, 2 vols. octavo, 1826. In addition to the preferments already mentioned, Dr Brown was honoured, in 1800, with the appointment of chaplain in ordinary to the king; and, in 1804, was nominated dean of the Chapel-royal, and of the order of the Thistle. He was, last of all, in 1825, appointed to read the Gordon course of lectures on practical religion, in the Marischal college. Though thus bearing such a multiplicity of offices, Dr Brown was, upon principle, opposed to pluralities, and was, perhaps, only tempted to transgress the rule in his own case, by the want of adequate endowments for his two chief offices, those of divinity professor and of principal. Dr Brown died, May 11, 1830, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Be- ides his great talents and acquirements, he was characterized by many excel- ent personal qualities. His mind was altogether of a manly cast ; and, though lonoured with the regards of a court, he was incapable of cowering to mere i-ank and station. With some warmth of temper, he was open, sincere, and generous, and entertained sentiments of unbounded libernlity towards his fellow creatures, of all ranks, and of all countries-, j. 2s 322 THOMAS BROWN. BROWN, THOMAS, a distinguished modern philosophical writer, the son of the Rev. Samuel Brown, minister of the parish of Kirkmabreck in the stewarty of Kirkcudbright, was born at the manse of that parish, January 9, 1778. Deprived of his father when between one and two years old, Thomas Brown was conveyed to Edinburgh, where for some years he lived under the charge of his wido\\ed mother. By her he was taught the elements of learning at a singularly early age, acquiring the whole alphabet, it is said, by one effort, cr, to use other words, in one lesson, and every thing else with the same amazing facility. When between four and five years of age, he was able to read the scriptures, and also, it would appear, partly to understand them ; one d.iy, at that period of his life, he was found sitting on the floor of his mother's parlour, with a large family bible on his knee, which he was dividing into different parts with his hand; being asked jocularly if he intended to preach, and wfis now choosing a text, he said, " No, 1 am only wishing to see what the evangelists differ in ; for they do not all give the same account of Christ'' From the kindly tutelage of his mother he was removed in the seventh year of his age, and placed by his maternal uncle, Captain Smith, in a school at Camberwell, from which in a short time he was transferred to one at Chiswick, where he continued for some years. In these and two other academies he spent the years between seven, and fourteen, and acquired a perfect classical education. In 1792, he returned to the maternal roof at Edinburgh, and commenced a course of attendance at the University. At this period of his life he was deeply read in the English belles lettres, and had even collected a considerable library, which, however, was lost at sea in its passage from Engliinu to Scotland. Having gone to Liverpool to spend the vacation of 1793 with some friends, he became, boy as he was, the intimate friend of Dr Currie, the amiable biographer of Burns, who is believed to have been the first ca-ise of his directing his mind to metaphysical studies by placing in his hands the first volumes of Professor Dugald Stewart's "Elements of the Philoso- phy of the Human Mind," then just published. The impressions he received from this work were deepened next winter, when he attenjled its author's prelections in the moral philosophy class at Edinburgh college. Yet, much as he admired Professor Stewart, he did not fail, even at the early age of sixteen, to detect that deficiency of analysis, which often lurks under the majestically flowing veil of his language and imagery. According to the late Dr. Welsh, whose very pleasing memoir of Dr Brown is here followed, the scholar took an early opportunity of presenting to his master a few remarks which he had thrown together in reference to one of his theories. " Those who remember the digni- fied demeanour of Mr Stewart in his class, which was calculated to convey the idea of one of those great and gifted men who were seen among the groves of the Academy, will duly appreciate the boldness of our young philosopher. With great modesty he read his observations; to which Mr Stewart, with a candour that was to be expected from a philosopher, but which not the less on that ac- count did him infinite honour, listened patiently, and then, with a smile of won- der and admiration, read to him a letter which he had received from the distinguished M. Prevost of Geneva, containing the same argument which Dr Brown had stated."' This delightful incident was the commencement of an ac- quaintance between the master and the pupil, which led to more intimate rela- tions, and only ended with the death of Dr Brown. The varied and profound acquirements of this extraordinary young man, soon attracted to him the atten- tion and friendship of many other personages, distinguished by academic rank and literary reputation, especially Professors Robison, Playfair, and Black, and Messrs Homer, Leyden, Reddie, and Erskine. Ere he had completed his twentieth year, he was led, by the spirit of philosophical inquiry, to write " Ob- THOMAS BROWN. 323 servations upon Dr Darwin's Zoonomia," in a pamphlet which far surpassed the work which had called it forth. It appeared in 1798, and, while it excited astonishment in those who knew the years of the author, was received in other quarters as the work of a veteran in philosophy. Dr. Welsh justly characterises it as one of the most remarkable exemplifications of premature intellect which has ever been exhibited, and states that, though unfortunate in its object, and the exposure of an unworthy production, it is found to contain the germ of all Dr Brown's subsequent discoveries as to mind, and of those principles of philoso- phizing by which he was guided in his future inquiries. Dr Brown at this time belonged to an association of young men, which, whether from its peculiar object, the celebrity since acquired by several of its members, or one remarkable result of its existence, must be acknowledged as possessing no ordinary claims to attention. It was called the Academy of Physics, and its object is described in the minutes of its first meeting to have been, *' the investigation of nature, the laws by which her phenomena are regulated, and the history of opinions concerning these laws." The first members were 31essrs Brougham, Erskine, Reddie, Erown, Hogerson, Birbeck, Logan, and Leyden ; to whom were afterwards joined Lord Webb Sey- mour, the Hev. Sydney Smith, and Messrs Horner, Jeffrey, and Gillespie. The Academy prosecuted its investigations with great assiduity and success for about three years ; like many other clubs, the spirit in which it was originated began to change with the changed years, and altered views of its members ; it flagged, failed, and was finally broken up. The remarkable result of its existence, above alluded to, was the establishment of the Edinburgh Review. The first writers in this work were Jeffrey, Brougham, Sydney Smith, Horner, and Brown. Tue leading article of the second number, upon Kant's philosophy, was by the last of these gentlemen. Mr. Brown, however, did not long continue to contribute ; a misunderstanding with the gentleman who superintended the publication of the third number, regarding some liberties taken with one of his articles, was the cause of his retirement. Brown's first ideas as to a profession, led him to choose the bar, and for a twelvemonth he prosecuted the dry studies of the law. An insurmountable repugnance, however, to this pursuit caused him afterwards to study medicine. He obtained his degree of M.D. in 1803, on which occasion he was honoured with the highest commendations from Dr Gregory, not only for his proficiency in medical learning, but for the amazingly fluent and elegant style f his Latinity, of which no one could judge better than that learned professor, him- self acknowledged to be the best Latinist of his time in Scotland. Previous to this period, namely in 1800, when he was only twenty-two years of age, his friends had, unsuccessfully, endeavoured to obtain for him the chair of rhetoric ; but a syetem by which the clergy of the university seat were almost invariably preferred to the vacant chairs, blasted his hopes on this occasion. This disrtppointment, with his antipathy to the courtly party of the church, by which it was patronized, seems to have inspired him with a vehement aversion to a system, which can only be palliated by a consideration of the narrow stipends then enjoyed by the clergy, and the propriety of enriching, by this oblique means, the prospects which were to induce men of abilities to enter the church. Upon the promotion of Mr Playfair to the chair of Natural Philosophy, Mr Leslie competed for the vacant chair of Mathe- matics with a clergyman whose attainments in that study, though more than respect- able, certainly could not be placed on an equality with those of the opposing candi- date. The church party, knowing that they could not make out any superior qualifications in their candidate on the score of mathematics, endeavoured 10 produce the same effect by depreciating Mr Leslie's qualifications on the score of religion. Their proof lay in a note to Mr Leslie's essay on heat, containing an expression of approbation respecting Hume's doctrine of causation. The can- 324 THOMAS BROWN. rass, which lay in tb, town-council, was the cause of great excitement in the literary world, and for some time absorbed every other topic of discourse in Edinburgh. Dr Brown was tempted by his feelings on this subject to come for- ward with an essay, disproving the inferences which were drawn from 31 r Les- lie's note ; an essay which, in a subsequent edition, he expanded into a complete treatise on cause and effect Through the influence of this powerful appeal, and other similar expressions of public feeling, the patrons of the chair were shamed for once out of their usual practice, and Mr Leslie received the appointment. Dr Brown had before this period published two volumes of miscellaneous poems, which, though they did not meet with brilliant success, are yet to be admired as the effusions of an ingenious and graceful mind. In 1r Murray ), because it was long and confidently reported by those who wished to lessen his reputation, that he was totally and incorrigibly ignorant of the art. In July 1757, he sailed for Portugal, landed at Corunna, and soon reached Lisbon. He was much struck by the ways of the Portuguese, many of which JAMES BRUCE. 329 nre directly opposite to those of all other nations. A Portuguese gentleman, showing out a friend, walks before him to the door ; a Portuguese boatman rows with his face to the front of the vessel, and lands stern foremost ; when a man and woman ride on horseback, the woman is foremost, and sits with her face to the right side of the animal. And what, in Bruce's opinion, accounted for all this contrariety, the children are rocked in cradles "which move from head to foot. From Portugal, after four month's stay, Bruce travelled into Spain, where he also spent a considerable time. The sight of the remains of Moorish gran- deur here inspired him with the wish of writing an account of the domination of that people in Spain ; but he found the materials inaccessible through the jealousy of the government. Leaving Spain, he traversed France, visited Brus- sels, and, passing through Holland into Germany, there witnessed the battle of Crevelt. Returning by Rotterdam, he received intelligence of the death of his father, by which event he became laird of Kinnaird. The property he thus acquired was soon after considerably increased by the establishment of the Car- ron company, which was supplied with coal from his mines. He now employed himself in studying the Arabic language, a branch of knowledge then little regarded in Britain. In 1761, he withdrew entirely from the wine trade. About this time, Bruce formed an acquaintance with Mr Pitt, ( the elder,) then at the head of affairs, to whom he proposed a scheme for making a descent upon Spain, against which country Britain was expected to declare war. Though this project cair.e to nothing, Lord Halifax had marked the enterprising genius of this Scottish gentleman, and proposed to him to signalise the commencement of the new reign by making discoveries in Africa. It was not part of this pro- posal that he should attempt to reach the source of the Nile ; that prodigious exploit, which had baffled the genius of the civilised world for thousands of years, seemed to Lord Halifax to be reserved for some more experienced person ; his lordship now only spoke of discoveries on the coast of Barbary, which had then been surveyed, and that imperfectly, by only one British traveller, Dr Shaw. F\>r this end, Bruce was appointed to be consul at Algiers. In an interview with George III., with which he was honoured before setting out, his Majesty requested him to take drawings of the ruins of ancient architecture which he should discover in the course of his travels. It having been provided that he should spend some time by the way in Italy, he set out for that country in June 176-2. He visited Rome, Naples, and Florence, and fitted himself by surveying the works of ancient art, for the observations he was to make upon kindred objects in Africa. Here he formed an acquaintance with a native of Bologna, name Luigi Balugani, whom he engaged to attend him in his travels, in the capacity of an artist. He at length sailed from Leghorn to Algiers, which he reached in March 1763. Ali Pacha, who then acted as Dey in this barbarous state, was a savage character, not unlike the celebrated personage of the same name, whom Lord Byron introduced to European notice. An injudicious yield- ing to his will, on the part of the English government, who changed a consul at his request, had just given an additional shade of insolence and temerity to his character ; and he expected to tyrannisa over Bruce as over one of his own officers. The intrepidity of the new consul, it may be imagined, was, under such circumstances, called into frequent action. He several times bearded this lion in his very den, always apparently indebted for his safety to the very auda- city which might huve been expected to provoke his ruin. A good idea of the true British fortitude which he exerted under such circumstances, may be gained from a letter to Lord Halifax, in which, after recommending forcible measures, which would have been highly dangerous to his own personal security, he says, " I myself have received from a friend some private intimations to consult my T. 2T 330 JAMES BRUCE. own safety and escape. The advice is impracticable, nor would I take it were it not so. Your lordship may depend upon it, that till I have the king's orders, or find that I can be of no further service here, nothing will make me leave Algiers but force. One brother has already, this war, had the honour to lost his life in the service of his country. Two others, besides myself, are still in it, and if any accident should happen to me, as is most probable from those lawless butchers, all I beg of his Majesty is that he will graciously please to extend his favour to the survivors, if deserving, and that he will make this city an example to others, how they violate public faith and the law of nations." It is this con- stancy and firmness, in postponing the consideration of danger to the considera- tion of duty, which has mainly tended to exalt the British character above these of other nations. Bruce weathered every danger, till August 1765, when, being relieved by the arrival of another consul, he left this piratical stronghold, and began to prosecute his researches along the coast of Africa. Landing at Bona, he paid a visit to Utica, " out of respect to the memory of Cato," and then, with a proper retinue for his protection, penetrated into the interior of the kingdoms of Algiers and Tunis. On the borders of these states, he found a tribe named the Welled Sidi Boogannim, who are exempted from taxes on con- dition of their living exclusively upon lions; a means of keeping down tln.se enemies of the public. Dr Shaw, the only British predecessor of Bruce in (his line of research, had been much laughed at, and even openly scouted, for having hinted at the existence of such a custom. His friends at Oxford thought it a subversion of the established order of things, that a man should eat a lion, when it had long passed as almost the peculiar province of the lion to eat the man. Bruce was exactly the man to go the more boldly forward when such a lion was in the way. He thus alludes, in his own travels, to the foolish scepticism with which Dr Shaw's statement had been received : " With all submission to the learned University, I will not dispute the lion's title to eating men ; but since it is not founded upon patent, no consideration will make me stifle the merit of the Willid Sidi Boogannim, who have turned the chase upon the enemy. It is a historical fact, and 1 will not permit the public to be misled by a misrepresentation of it On thecontrary, I do aver, in the face of these fantastic prejudices, that I have ate the flesh of lions, that is, part of three lions, in the tents of the Willid Sidi Boogannim.'' This is certainly a notable enough specimen of the contra audientior ito. After having traversed the whole of these states, and taken drawings of every antiquity which he es- teemed worthy of notice, he moved further west to Tripoli, where he was received with great kindness by Mr Fraser of Lovat, British consul at that place. From Tripoli he dispatched the greater part of his drawings to Smyrna, by which pre- caution they were saved from the destruction which must have otherwise been their fate. Crossing the Gulf of Sidra, which makes a considerable sweep into the northern coast of Africa, Bruce now reached Bengazio, the ancient Berenice built by Ptolemy Philadelphia From this place he travelled to Ptolemata, where, finding the plague raging, he was obliged to embark hastily in a Greek vessel which he hired to carry him to Crete. This was perhaps the most unlucky step he took during the whole of his career. The vessel was not properly provided with ballast; the sails defied the management of the ignorant man who professed to steer it ; it had not therefore got far from shore when a storm drove it to lee- ward, and it struck upon a rock near the harbour of Bengazi. Bruce took to the boat, along with a great number of the other passengers ; but finding that it could not survive, and fearing lest he should be overwhelmed by a multitude of drowning wretches, he saw it necessary to commit himself at once to the sea, and endeavour to swim ashore. In this attempt, after suffering much from the vio- .TAMES BRUCE. 331 leuce of the surf, he was at last successful He had only, however, become ex- posed to greater dangers. A plundering party of Arabs came to make prey of die Avrecked vessel, and his Turkish clothing excited their worst feelings. After much suffering he got back to Bengazi, but Avith the loss of all his baggage, in- cluding many valuable instruments and drawings. Fortunately, the master of a French sloop, to whom he had rendered a kindness at Algiers, happened to be lying in that port Through the grateful service of this person, he was carried to Crete. An ague, however, had fixed itself upon his constitution, in conse- quence of his exertions in the sea of Ptolemata : it attacked him violently in Crete, and he lay for some days dangerously ill. On recovering a little, he pro- ceeded to Rhodes, and from thence to Asia Minor, where he inspected the ruins of Baalbec and Palmyra. By the time he got back to Sidon, he found that his let- ters to Europe announcing the loss of bis instruments, were answered by the transmission of a new set, including a quadrant from Louis XV., who had been told by Count Buft'on of the unhappy affair of Bengazi. In June 1768, he sailed from Sidon to Alexandria, resolved no longer to delay that perilous expedition which had taken possession of his fancy. " Previous to his first introduction to the waters of the Nile," says Captain Head, " it may not be improper, for a moment, calmly and dispassionately to consider how far he was qualified for the attempt which he was about to undertake. Being- thirty-eight years of age, he was at that period of life in which both the mind and body of man are capa- ble of their greatest possible exertions. During his travels and residence in Europe, Africa, and Asia, he had become practically acquainted with the religion, manners, and prejudices of many countries different from his own ; and he had learned to spaak the French, Italian, Spanish, Modern Greek, Moorish and Arabic lan- guages. Full of enterprise, enthusiastically devoted to the object he had in view, accustomed to hardship, inured to climate as well as to fatigue, he was a man of undoubted courage, in staticre six feet four, and with this imposing appearance, possessing great personal strength ; and lastly, in every proper sense of the \vord, he was a gentleman ; and no man about to travel can give to his country a better pledge for veracity than when, like Bruce, his mind is ever retrospectively viewing the noble conduct of his ancestors thus showing that he considers he has a stake in society, which, by the meanness of falsehood or exaggeration, he would be unable to transmit unsullied to posterity." From Alexandria he pro- ceeded to Cairo, where he was received with distinction by the Bey, under the character of a dervish, or soothsayer, which his acquaintance with eastern man- ners enabled him to assume with great success. It happened, fortunately for his design, that in the neighbourhood of Cairo resided a. Greek patriarch, who had lived sometime under his roof at Algiers, and taught him the Modern Greek lan- guage. This pereon gave him letters to many Greeks who held high situations in Abyssinia, besides a bull, or general recommendation, claiming protection for him from the numerous persons of that nation residing in the country. Bruce had previously acquired considerable knowledge of the medical art, as part of that preparatory education with which he had fitted himself for his great task. The Bey fortunately took ill : Bruce cured him. His highness, in gratitude, furnished him with recommendatory letters to a great number of ruling person- ages throughout Egypt, and along both shores of the lied Sea. Bruce, thus well provided, commenced his voyage up the Nile, December 12, 1768, in a large canja or boat, which was to carry him to Furshoot, the residence of Amner, the Sheikh of Upper Egypt. For two or three weeks he enjoyed the pleasure of coasting at ease and in safety along the wonder-studded banks of this splendid river, only going on shore occasionally to give the more remarkable objects a narrower inspection. He was at Furshoot on the 7th of January, 1765. Ad- 332 JAMES BRUCE. vancing hence to Sheikh Amner, the encampment of a tribe of Arabs, whose dominion extended almost to the coast of the Red Sea, he was fortunate enough to acquire the friendship of the Sheikh, or head of the race, by curing him of a dangerous disorder. This secured him the means of prosecuting his journey in a peaceable manner. Under the protection of this tribe, he soon reached Cossier, a fort on the Red Sea, having previously, however, sent all his journals and drawings, hitherto completed, to the care of some friends at Cairo. Bruce sailed from Cosseir on the 5th of April, and for several months he employed himself in making geographical observations upon the coasts of this important sea. On the 19th of September, after having for the first time determined the latitude and longitude of many places, which have since been found wonderfully correct, he landed at Massuah, the port of Abyssinia. Here he encountered great danger and difficulty, from the savage character of the Nay be, or governor of Massuah, who, not regarding the letters carried by Bruce from the Bey of Cairo, had very nearly taken his life. By the kindness of Achmet, a nephew of the Naybe, whom Bruce rescued from a deadly sickness, he was enabled to surmount the obstacles presented against him in this place, and on the 15th November began to penetrate the country of Abyssinia. In crossing the hill of Tarenta, a moun- tainous ridge, which skirts the shore, the traveller encountered hardships under which any ordinary spirit would have sunk. Advancing by Dixan, Adowa, and Axum, he found himself greatly indebted for safety and accommodation to the letters which he carried for the Greeks, who formed the civilized class amongst that rude people. It was in the neighbourhood of Axum that he saw the unfortunate sight (the slicing of steaks from the rump of a live cow), which was the chief cause of his being afterwards generally discredited in his own country. On the 14th of February, after a journey of ninety-five days from Massuah, he reached Gondar, the capital of Abyssinia, a town containing about ten thousand families. The king and his chief minister Ras Michael, to both of whom Bruce had letters of introduction, were now absent with the army, putting down a rebellion which had been raised by Fasil, a turbulent governor of a province. But Bruce was favourably received by one Ayto Aylo, a Greek, and chamberlain of the palace. It happened that the favourite child of Ras Michael was at this time ill with the small pox at the country palace of Koscam. Ozoro Esther, the beautiful young wife of Ras Michael, and the mother of this child, watched over the sick- bed with intense anxiety. Bruce, by the good offices of Ayto Aylo, was intro- duced to the distracted mother as a skilful physician ; and after some preliminary civilities, he undertook to cure the child, in which task he very soon succeeded. Having thus at once made favour in a very high quarter, he waited patiently for two or three weeks, when the king and Ras Michael, having gained a victory, returned to Gondar, and Bruce was then presented to them. Ras Michael, at the first interview, acknowledged the powerful nature of Bruce's recommendations, but explained to him, that owing to the present convulsed state of the country, it would be difficult to afford him all the protection that might be wished. It appeared to Michael, that the best way of ensuring personal safety and respect for him throughout the country, would be to give him a high office in the king's household. Bruce consented, from the conviction that in becoming Baalomaal, and commander of the Koccob horse, he was doing his best towards facilitating his journey. While acting in the capacity of Baalomaal, which seems to have been somewhat like the British office of Lord of the bed-chamber, he secured the king's favour and admiration, by the common school-boy trick of shooting a small candle through a dense substance. He was now appointed to be governor of a large Mahometan province, which lay on the way he designed to take in returning home : this duty, however, he could perform by deputy. In May, the JAMES BRUCE. 333 army set out from Gondar t.o meet the rebel Fasil, and Bruce took that share in the fatigues and perils of the campaign which his office rendered necessary. He was of great service in improving the discipline of the army, and was looked upon as a finished warrior. After a good deal of marching and countermarch- ing, the royal forces gained a complete victory over Fasil, who was consequently obliged to make his submission. This rebel now lived on amicable terms with the king and his officers, and Bruce, recollecting the interesting site of his go- vernment, busied himself in performing medical services to his principal officers. When the king came to ask Bruce what reward he would have for his share in the campaign, the enthusiastic traveller answered, that he only wished two favours, the property of the village of Geesh, with the spot in its neighbourhood where he understood the Nile to arise, and a royal mandate obliging Fasil to facilitate his journey to that place. The king, smiling at the humility of his desires, granted the request, only regretting that Zagoube ( such was the name assumed by Bruce in his travels, ) could not be induced to ask something ten times more precious. The attention of the sovereign and his minister were now distracted by the news of another insurrection in the western parts of the kingdom ; and it was necessary to move the army in that direction. Bruce made the excuse of his health ( which was really bad ) to avoid attendance in this campaign ; and at length, with some difficulty, he obtained the king's permission to set out for Geesh, which lie was now resolved on, notwithstanding that the breaking out of another rebellion omened ill for the continued submission of Fasil, and conse- quently for the safety of the traveller. Bruce set out upon this last great stage of his journey on the 28th of October, 1770, and he was introduced to the pre- sence of Fasil at a place called i Jamba. Fasil, partly through the representations of those' officers to whom Bruce had recommended himself, was in reality favour- ably disposed to him ; but he at first thought proper to affect a contrary senti- ment, and represented the design as impracticable. In the course of the wrang. ling which took place between the two on this subject, Bruce was so much in- censed that his nose spontaneously gushed with blood, and his servant had to lead him from the lent. Fasil expressed sorrow at this incident, and immediately made amends by taking measures to facilitate Bruce's journey. He furnished him with a guide called Woldo, as also seven savage chieftains of the country for a guard, and furthermore added, what was of greater avail than all the rest, a horse of his own, richly caparisoned, which was to go before the travelling party, as a symbol of his protection, in order to insure the respect of the natives. By way of giving a feasible appearance to the journey, Bruce was invested by Fasil with the property and governorship of the district of Geesh, in which the Nile rises, so that this strangely disguised native of Stirlingshire, in the kingdom of Scotland, looked entirely like an Abyssinian chief going to take possession of an estate in the highlands cf that remote and tropical country. Bruce left Fasil's house on the 31st of October, and as he travelled onward for a few days through this rude territory, the people, instead of giving him any annoyance, everywhere fled at his approach, thinking, from the appearance of Fasil's horse, that the expeditioi was one of taxation and contribution. Those few whom Bruce came in contac with, he found to have a religious veneration for the Nile, the remains of t Pagan worship which was originally paid to it, and which was the sole religion of the country before the introduction of Christianity. Even the savages who formed his guard, would have been apt, as he found, to destioy him, if he hai crossed the river on horseback, or employed its waters in washing any part ot h dress. He also learned that there was still a kind of priest of this worship, who dwelt at the fountain of the Nile, and was called " the servant cf the river/' thus appeared that, as in the ruder parts of Bruce's native country, the abongin; 334 JAMES BRUCE. religion had partly survived the ordinances cf a new and purer worship for many centuries. It was early in the afternoon of November 3d, that Bruce surmounted a ridge of hills which separated him. from the fountain of the Nile, and for the Irst time cast his European eyes upon that object the first, and, we believe, the only European eyes that have ever beheld it. It was pointed out to him by Woldo, his guide, as a hillock of green sod in the middle of a marshy spot a the bottom of the hill on which he was standing. To quote his own account of so remarkable a point in his life " Half undressed as I was, by the loss of my sash, and throwing off my shoes, [a necessary preliminary, to satisfy the Pagan feelings of the people], I ran down the hill, towards the hillock of green sod, which was about two hundred yards distant ; the whole side of the hill was thick grown with flowers, the large bulbous roots of which appearing above the surface of the ground, and their skins coming off on my treading upon them, occasioned me two very severe falls before I reached the brink of the marsh. I after this came to the altar of green turf, which was apparently the work of art, and I stood in rapture above the principal fountain, which rises in the middle of it It is easier to guess than to describe the situation of my mind at that moment standing in that spot which had baffled the genius, industry, and enquiry of both ancients and moderns for the course of ne ( ar three thousand years. Kings had attempted this discovery at the head of armies, and each expedition was distin- guished from the last only by the difference of numbers which had perished, and agreed alone in the disappointment which had uniformly and without exception followed them all Fame, riches, and honour had been held out for a series of ages to every individual of those myriads these princes commanded, without hav ing produced one man capable of gratifying the curiosity of his sovereign, or wiping off this stain upon the enterprise and abilities of mankind, cr adding this desideratum for the encouragement of geography. Though a mere private Bri- ton, I triumphed here, in my own mind, over kings and their armies ! and every comparison was leading nearer and nearer to presumption, when the place itself where I stood, the object of my vain glory, suggested what depressed my short- lived triumph. I was but a few minutes arrived at the sources of the Nile, through numberless dangers and sufferings, the least of which would have over- whelmed me, but for the continual goodness and protection of Providence : I was, however, but then half through my journey, and all those dangers through which I had already passed awaited me on my return ; I found a despondency gaining ground fast, and blasting the crown of laurels which I had too rashly- woven for myself." In this paragraph one of the most deeply touching ever written we find the Herculean mind of Bruce giving way, under the influence of success, to sensations which had scarcely ever affected him during the whole course of his journey, while as yet the desire of going onward, and the neces- sity of providing the means of doing so with safety, possessed and amused his mind. Nothing could be more characteristic of a reat mind by danger and hardship only braced to more nervous exertion by opposition only rendered the more eager and firm by the menaces of inferior minds only roused to con- temptuous defiance ; and only to be softened by kindness, only to be subdued by success. Many other emotions, however, must have entered the breast of the traveller in that remarkable hour of his life. All the inspiring causes of his journey must have rushed full upon him the desire of overcoming a difficulty which had defied the civilized part of the earth since ever it was civilized the hope of doing that which Alexander, and many of the greatest men of antiquity had wished, but failed to do the curiosity of rendering that a matter of real and human exertion which an ancient poet could only suppose possible to a supernatural being on an extraordinary occasion : JAMES BRUCE. 335 Nilus in extreinum fugit perterrLtu* orbem, Occuluitque caput, quod ad hue latet. iwn in fUeflhontem. and, finally, the more rational glory of performing such a service to science, as must procure for him the approbation of his sovereign and fallow-countrymen, and even obtain a peculiar distinction for his country among the other civilized nations. Besides all these emotions, which had hitherto carried his enthusiastic mind through unheard of difficulties, he must have recalled at this moment softer sensations. The idea that he was now at the extreme point of distance from home, would awaken the vision of that home which he had not seen for so many years ; and from this spot, in a metaphysical mirage, he would see the far blue hills of his native land, the estuary, the river, the fields, and the mansion of his childhood the hearts that beat for him there, including one whose pulsations were worth all the rest ; and the old familiar faces, whose kindly expression had been too long exchanged for the unkindred countenances of barbarians and strangers. There might also mingle with the varied tide of his sensations a re- luctantly acknowledged sense of the futility of all his exertions, and perils, and sufferings, since they had only obtained for him the sight of a Pagan altar from which proceeded one of the feeders, not certainly known to be the principal one, of the mighty Nile ; to what good could this sight conduce, since, after all, it was only a sight ? the object having been all along proved to exist by the mere laws of nature. The majestic intellect of Bruce might turn from such a paltry object, and confess, with secret bitterness, that the discovery of the source of the Nile was only valuable so long as it seemed impossible, but that, now being achieved, it sunk into insignificance, like the glittering air-ball seized by the hand of a child. The traveller relates that his despondency continued for some time ; and that, as he could not reason it away, he resolved to direct it till he might be able, on more solid reflection, to overcome its progress. Calling to Strates, a faithful Greek, who had accompanied him throughout all his Abyssinian travels, he said, ' Strates, faithful squire ! come and triumph with your Don Quixote at that island of Barataria, to which we have most wisely and fortunately brought ourselves ! Come and triumph with me over all the kings of the earth, all their armies, all their philosophers, and all their heroes !' 'Sir,' says Strates, ' I do not under- stand a word of what you say, and as little of what you mean : you very well know I am no scholar.' ' Come,' said I, ' take a draught of this excellent water, and drink with me a health to his Majesty George 111., and a long line of princes.' I had in my hand a large cup, made of a cocoa-nut shell, which I procured in Arabia, and which was brimful." [T"' 8 CU P was brought home by Bruce, and his representatives at Kinnaird still use it every day when they en- tertain company at dinner.] " He drank to the king speedily and cheerfully, with the addition of ' confusion to his enemies,' and tossed up his cap with a loud huzza. 'Now, friend,' said I, ' here is to a more humble, but still a sacred name here is to 31aria !' " This was a Scottish lady, we believe, a 31iss Murray of Polmaise, to whom Bruce had formed an attachment before leaving his native country. These ceremonies being completed, he entered the village of Geesh, and assumed for four days the sovereignty to which Fasil had given him a ti During this brief space, he made forty observations as to the exact geograplaca site of the fountain, and found it to be in north latitude 10 55)' 55' 30" east longitude, while its position was supposed from the barometer to b two miles above the level of the sea. Bruce left Geesh upon his return on t 10th of November, and he arrived at Gondar, without any remarkable ad^ ture, on the 17th. Here he found that Fasil had set a new insurrection o foot, and had been again unsuccessful. For some time great numbers of h* 33G JAMES BRUCE. adherents, or rather the adherents of a mock king whom he had set up, were daily sacrificed. Bruce was at first somewhat uneasy in this disagree- able scene, and the maxim of the Abyssinians, never to permit a stranger to quit the country, came full upon his mind. Early, however, in January, 1771, he obtained the king's permission, on the plea of his health, to return home, though not without a promise that he would come back, when his health was re- established, bringing with him as many of his family as possible, with horses, muskets, and bayonets. Ere he could take advantage of this permission, fresh civil wars broke out, large provinces became disturbed, and Bruce found that, as he had had to take part in the national military operations in order to pave the way for reaching the head of the Nile, so was it now necessary that he should do his best for the suppression of the disturbances, that he might clear his way to- wards home. During the whole of the year 1771, he was engaged with the army, and he distinguished himself so highly as a warrior, that the king pre- sented him with a massive gold chain, consisting of one hundred and eighty-lour links, each of them weighing 3 and I 12th dwts. It was not till the 26th of December, thirteen months after his return from the source of the Nile, that he set out on his way towards Europe ; nor even then was the country reduced to a peaceable condition. He was accompanied by three Greeks, an old Turkish Janissary, a captain, and some common muleteers ; the Italian artist Balugani having died at Gondar. On account of the dangers which he had experienced at 3Iassuah from the barbarous Naybe, he had resolved to return through the great deserts of Nubia into Egypt, a tract by which he could trace the Nile in the greater part of its course. On the 23d of March, after a series of dreadful hardships, he reached Teawa, the capital of Abbara, and was introduced to the Sheikh, who, it seemed, was unwell, though not so much so as to have lost any part of his ferocious disposition. Bruce here met with an adventure, which, as it displays his matchless presence of mind in a very brilliant light, may be here related. He had undertaken to administer medicine to the Sheikh, who was in the alcove of a spacious room, sitting on a sofa surrounded by curtains. On the entrance of Bruce, he took two whiffs of his pipe, and when the slave had left the room said, " Are you prepared ? Have you brought the money along with you ?' Bruce replied, ''My servants are at the other door, and have the vomit you wanted." " Curse you and the vomit too,'' cried the Sheikh in great passion, " I want money and not poison. Where are your piastres?" " I am a bad person," replied Bruce, " to furnish you with either ; I have neither money nor poison ; but I advise you to drink a little warm water to clear your stomach, cool your head, and then lie down and compose yourself; I will see you to-morrow morning.'' Bruce was retiring, when the Sheikh exclaimed, " Hakim, [physician] infidel, or devil, or whatever is your name, hearken to what I say. Consider where you are ; this is the room where Mek Baady, a king, was slain by the hand of my father : look at his blood, where it has stained the floor, and can never be washed out. I am informed you have twenty thousand piastres in gold with you; either givo me two thousand before you go out of this chamber, or you shall die ; I shall put you to death with my own hand.'' Upon this he took up his sword, which was lying at the head of his sofa, and drawing it with a bravado, threw the scabbard into the middle of the room, and, tucking the sleeve of his shirt above the elbow, like a butcher, he said, " I wait your answer." Bruce stept one pace backwards, and laid his hand upon a little blunderbuss, without taking it off the belt In a firm tone of voice, he replied, " This is my answer : I am not a man to die like a beast by the hand of a drunkard ; on your life, I charge you, stir not from your sofa. I had no need,'' says Bruce, " to give this injunction , JAMES BRUCE. 337 he heard the noise which the closing of the joint in the stock of the blunderbuss made, and thought I had cocked it, and was instantly to fire. He let his sword drop, and threw himself on his back upon the sofa, crying, 'For God's sake Hakim, I was but jesting.' " Bruce turned from the cowed bully, and coolly wished him a good night. After being detained three weeks at this place, he set out for Sennaar, the capital of Nubia, which he reached at the end of April He was here received kindly by the king, but the barbarous maxims of the country caused his detention for upwards of four mouths, during which the exhaustion of his funds caused him to sell the whole of his gold chain except a few links. At lengthen the 5th of September, he commenced his journeyacross the great desert of Nubia, and then only, it might be said, began the true hardships of his expedition. As he advanced upon the sandy and burning plain, his provisions became exhauste.lj his camels and even his men perished by fatigue, and he was in the greatest danger, almost every day, of being swallowed up by the moving sands which loaded the breath of the deadly simoom. For weeks and months the miserable party toiled through the desert, enduring hardships of which no denizen of a civilized state can form the least idea. At last, on the 29th of December, just as he had given his men the last meal which remained to them, and when all, of course, had given themselves up for lost, they came within hearing of the cataracts of the Nile, and reached the town of Syene or Assouan, where succour in its amplest forms awaited them. Twelve dreadful weeks Bruce had spent upon the desert : his journey from the capital of Abyssinia to this point had altogether occupied eleven months. It was now exactly four years since he had left civilized society at Cairo ; during all which time he had conversed only with barbarous tribes of people, from whose passions no man possessed of les varied accomplish- ment, less daring, and less address, could have possibly escaped. He sailed down the Nile to Cairo, which he reached on the 10th of January, 1773. He then sailed for Alexandria, whence he easily obtained a passage to Europe. Arriving at Marseilles in March, he was immediately visited and congratulated by a number of the French savans, at the head of whom was his former friend, Count de Buffbn. For some time, however, he was not sufficiently recovered from the debilitating effects of his journey to enjoy the polished society to which he was restored. A mental distress, moreover, had awaited his arrival in Europe. His Maria, whose health he had only postponed to that of his sovereign in drinking from the fountain of the Nile, despairing of his return, had given her hand to an Italian Marchese. Bruce withered under this disappointment more than under the sun of Nubia. In a transport of indignation, he travelled to Rome, and in a style of rodomontade, only to be excused by a kind consideration of his impetuous and ingenuous character, called the Marchese to account for a transaction, in which it was evident that only the lady could be to blame. The Marchese, with Bruce 's sword almost at his throat, disclaimed having married Maria with any knowledge of a previous engagement on her part : and with this Bruce had to rest satisfied. M nte alia reposcit ; his only resource was to bury his regrets in his own proud bosom, and despise the love which could permit a question of time or space to affect it. In the summer of 1774, he returned to England, from which he had now been absent twelve years. His fame having gone before him, he was received with the highest distinction. He was introduced at court, where he presented to George III. those drawings of Palmyra, Baalbec, and the African cities, which his Majesty had requested him to execute before his departure from the country. The triumphs of this enterprising traveller were, however, soon dashed and embittered by the mean conduct of a people and age altogether un- worthy of him. Bruce, wherever he went, was required to speak of what he had seen I. 2 u 3b8 JAMES BRUCE. and suffered in the course of his travels. He reLated anecdotes of the Abyssin- ian and Nubian tribes, and gave descriptions of localities and natural objects, which certainly appeared wonderful to a civilized people, though only because they were novel : he related nothing either morally or physically impossible. Unfortunately, however, the license of travellers was proverbial in Britain as elsewhere. It was also a prevailing custom at that time in private life, to exert the imagination in telling wonderful, but plausible, tales, as one of the amuse- ments of the table. There was furthermore a race of travellers who had never been able to penetrate into any very strange country, and who, therefore, pined beneath the glories of a brother who had discovered the source of the Nile. For all these reasons, the stories of Bruce were at the very first set down for imagi- nary tales, furnished forth by his own fancy. This view of the case was warmly taken up by a clique of literary men, who, without science themselves, and un- checked by science in others, then swayed the public mind. A mere race of garreteers, or little better, destroyed the laurels of this greatly accomplished man, who had done and endured more in the cause of knowledge during one day of his life, than the whole of them together throughout the entire term of their worth- less and mercenary existence. This is a dreadful imputation upon the age of George III., but we fear that the cold and narrow poverty of its literature, and the almost non-existence of its science, would make any less indignant account of its treatment of Bruce unjust. Even the country gentlemen in Scotland, who, while he was carving out a glorious name for himself and providing additional honour for his country, by the most extraordinary and magnanimous exertions, were sunk in the low sottishness of the period, or at most performed respect- ably the humble duties of surveying the roads and convicting the poachers of their own little districts, could sneer at the " lies" of Bruce. His mind shrunk from the meanness of his fellows; and he retired, indignant and disappointed, to Kinnaird, where, for some time, he busied himself in rebuilding his house, and arranging the concerns of his estate, which had become confused during his long absence. In March 1776, he provided additional means of happiness and repose, by marrying, for his second wife, Mary Dundas, daughter of Thomas Dundas, Esq. of Fingask, and of Lady Janet Maitland, daughter of the Earl of Lauderdale. This amiable and accomplished person was much younger than Bruce, and it is rather a singular coincidence, remarks Captain Head, that she was born in the same year in which his first wife had died. For nine years Bruce enjoyed too much domestic happiness to admit of his making a rapid pro- gress in the preparation of his journals for the press. But, after the death of his wife in 1785, he applied to this task with more eagerness, as a means of di- verting his melancholy. We have heard that in the composition of his book, he employed the assistance of a professional litterateur, who first transcribed his iournals into a continuous narrative, and then wrote them over again, involving all the alterations, improvements, and additional remarks, which the traveller was pleased to suggest The work appeared in 1790, seventeen years after his return to Europe. It consisted of five large quarto volumes, besides a volume of drawings, and was entitled, " Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile, in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773, by James Bruce, of Kinnaird, Esq., F. R. S.'> It was dedicated to the king ; and it is but justice to the memory of that sovereign to state, that, while society in general raised against it the cry of envy, jealousy, and ignorant incredulity, his Majesty stood boldly up in its favour, and contended that it was a very great work. The King used to say, that, had it not been for the indecorous nature of certain passages, he could have wished to find it in the hands of all his subjects, and he would him- self have placed a copy of it in every one of his palaces. The taste of this raon- MICHAEL BRUCE. 339 arch did not perhaps lead him to expend great sums in patronizing the arts of the lighter branches of literature, but he certainly was qualified to appreciate, and also disposed to encourage, any exertion on the part of his subjects which had a direct utility, and was consistent with honour and virtue. The magnum opus of Bruce was bought up by the public at its very first appearance : it required the whole of the impression to satisfy the first burst of public curiosity. It was, in the same year, translated into German and French. Bruce, in his latter years, lost much of his capabilities of enjoying life by his prodigious corpulence. We have been told that at this period of liis life he was enlarged to such a degree as almost to appear monstrous. His appearance was rendered the more striking, when, as was his frequent custom, he assumed an Eastern habit and turban. His death was at length caused indirectly by his cor- pulence. On the evening of the 27th of April, 1794, after he had entertained a large party at dinner, he was hurrying to escort an old lady down stairs to her carriage, when his foot that foot which had carried him through so many dangers, slipped upon the steps ; he tumbled down the stair, pitched upon his head, and was taken up speechless, with several of his fingers broken. Notwithstanding every effort to restore the machinery of existence, he expired that night. He was buried in the churchyard of his native parish of Larbert, where a monument indicates his last resting-place. To quote the character which has been written for him by Captain Head, "Bruce belonged to that useful class of men who are ever ready ' to set their life upon a cast, and stand the hazard of the die.' He was merely a traveller a knight-errant in search of new regions of the world ; yet the steady courage with which he encountered danger his patience and fortitude in adversity his good sense in prosperity the tact and judgment with which he steered his lonely urse through some of the most barren and barbarous countries in the world, bending even the ignorance, passions, and pre- judices of the people he visited to his own advantage the graphic truth with which he described the strange scenes which he had witnessed, and the inflexible fortitude with which he maintained his assertions against the barbarous incredulity of his age, place him at the top of his own class, while he at least stands second to no man." Bruce understood French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese the two former he could write and speak with facility. Besides Greek and Latin, which he read well, but not critically, he knew the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Sy- riac ; and in the latter part of his life, compared several portions of the Scrip- ture in those related dialects. He read and spoke with ease, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amhnric, which had proved of the greatest service to him in his travels. It is said that the faults of his character were inordinate family pride, and a want of that power to accommodate one's self to the weaknesses of others, which is so important a qualification in a man of the world. But amidst the splendours of such a history, and such an intellect, a few trivial weaknesses even allowing those to be so are as motes in the meridian sun. A second edition of Bruce's Travels was published in 1805, by Dr Alexander Murray, from a copy which the traveller himself had prepared to put to press. The first volume of this elegant edition contains a biographical account of the author, by Dr Murray, who was perhaps the only man of his age whom learning had fitted for so peculiar a task as that of revising Bruce's Travels. BRUCE, MICHAEL, with whose name is associated every regret that can be inspired by the early extinction of genius of a high order, still farther elevated by purity of life, was born at Kinnesswood, in the parish of Portmoak, Kinross- shire, on the 27th of March, 1746. His father, Alexander Bruce, a weaver, and his mother, whose name was also Bruce, were honest and pious Burghers ; they had eight children, Michael being the fifth. Manifesting from his earliest 340 MICHAEL BRUCE. years much delicacy of frame and quickness of parts, it was resolved to train him for the church ; and after acquiring the elements of education at the school of his native parish and of Kinross, he was sent to the college of Edinburgh in 1702. Here he remained four years, devoting himself during the three first to those branches of learning pursued by what are called students of philosophy, and in the last applying also to the study of divinity. Before quitting the country, he had given proofs of his predilection for poetry, which was encouraged by his friendship with Mr Arnot, a farmer on the banks of Lochleven, who, to the piety and good sense common among those of his pro- fession, added classical scholarship and an acquaintance with elegant literature. He directed Bruce to the perusal of Spenser, Shakspeare, and 31ilton, supplied him with the books, and became a judicious adviser in regard to his youthful essays in the poetic art. Mr David Pearson, a man who read much with advan- tage, had also the taste to relish what Bruce had the talents to produce, and en- joyed his intimacy. After removing to Edinburgh, he lived in habits of close intercourse with Mr George Henderson and Mr William Dryburgh, who opened to him their stores of books and information, as they did their affections, and with J'Ogan, whose congenial turn of mind made him the friend of Bruce in his life time, and his warm eulogist and editor of his works when he was no more. No one deserved better the attachment of those with whom he associated. " No less amiable as a man," says Logan, "than valuable as a writer; endued with good nature and good sense ; humane, friendly, benevolent ; he loved his friends, and was beloved by them with a degree of ardour that is only expe- rienced in the era of youth and innocence." The prominent place he has given in his poems to those from whose society he had derived delight, shows how sin- cere was the regard he cherished for them. As if that none of the ties by which life is endeared should be wanting to him, Bruce had fixed his affections on a young woman, modest and beautiful, with whose parents he resided while teach- ing a school at Gairny Bridge. He has celebrated her under the name of Eu- iiio I i a, in his pastoral of Alexis, and she was also the heroine of the only two songs he is known to have written. It appears that the parents of the poet entertained peculiarly rigid notions in regard to religion, and would have been seriously displeased if they had known that any part of their son's attention was occupied by subjects apart from his theological studies. Bruce anxiously avoided giving these prejudices any cause of offence, and, when about to return home from college in 1765, took the precaution of transmitting to his friend Arnot those volumes of which he knew his father would disapprove. " I ask your pardon," says his letter on this occasion, " for the trouble I have put you to by these books I have sent. The fear of a discovery made me choose this method. I have sent Shakspeare's works, 8 vols. Pope's works, 4 vols. and Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds.'' Bruce acknowledges that he felt his poverty deeply when he saw books which he ardently desired to possess exposed to sale, and had not money to lay out in the purchase. The same regret has been experienced by many a poor scho- lar ; but few perhaps terminate their complaints in the same train of pious reflec- tion. " How well," he says, " should my library be furnished, ' nisi obstat res angusta domi ! ' My lot forbids ; nor circumscribes alone My growing virtues, but my crimes confines.' Whether any virtues should have accompanied me in a more elevated station is uncertain ; but that a number of vices of which my sphere is incapable would have been its attendants is unquestionable. The Supreme Wisdom has seen this meet ; and Supreme Wisdom cannot err.'' MICHAEL BRUCE. 341 Even when prosecuting his favourite studies, Bruce is said to have been liable to that depression which is frequently the attendant of genius indeed, but in his case was also the precursor of a fatal disease. In December 1764, he wrote to his friend Arnot, " I am in health, excepting a kind of settled melancholy, for which I cannot account, that has seized on my spirits." Such seems to have been the first imperfect announcement of his consciousness that all was not well with him. It would be a mournful task, if it were possible, to trace the gradations by which his apprehensions strengthened and grew into that certainty which only two years after this produced the Elegy, in which so pathetically, yet so calmly, he anticipates his own death. In these years are understood to hare been written the greater part of his poems which has been given to the public. He spent the winters at college, and the summer in earning a small pittance by teaching a school, first at Gairny Bridge and afterwards at Forrest Mill near Alloa. In this latter place he had hoped to be happy, but was not ; having, he confesses, been too sanguine in his expectations. He wrote here Lochleven, the longest of his poems, which closes with these affecting lines : " Thus sung the youth, amid unfertile wilds And nameless deserts, unpoetic ground ! Far from his friends he stray'd, recording thus The dear remembrance of his native fields, To cheer the tedious night, while slow disease Prey'd on his pining vitals, and the blasts Of dark December shook his humble cot." A letter to Mr Pecrson, written in the same month in which he finished this poem, affords a still closer and more touching view of the struggle which he now maintained against growing disease, the want of comforts, and of friendly consolation. " I lead a melancholy kind of life,'' he says, " in this place. I am not fond of company ; but it is not good that a man be still alone : and here I can have no company but what is worse than solitude. If I had not a lively imagination, I believe I should fall into a state of stupidity and delirium. I have some evening scholars ; the attending on whom, though few, so fatigues me that the rest of the night I am quite dull and low-spirited. \et I have some lucid intervals, in the time of which I can study pretty well" " In the autumn of 1766," says Dr Anderson, " his constitution which was ill calculated to encounter the austerities of his native climate, the exertions of daily labour, and the rigid frugality of humble life began visibly to decline. Towards the end of the year, his ill health, aggravated by the indigence of his situation, and the want of those comforts and conveniences which might have fostered a delicate frame to maturity and length of days, terminated in a deep consumption. During the winter he quitted his employment at Forrest Mill, and with it all hopes of life, and returned to his native village to receive those attentions and consolations which his situation required, from the anxiety of parental affection and the sympathy of friendship. Convinced of the hopeless nature of his disease, and feeling himself every day declining, he contemplated the approaches of death with calmness and resignation, and continued at inter- vals to compose verses and to correspond with his friends." His last letter to Mr Pearson contains an allegorical description of human life, which discloses something of his state of mind under these impressive circum- stances. It is so beautiful as a composition, and at the same time so touchingly connected with the author's own situation, as to mingle in the reader pity and admiration to a degree which we are not aware that there is any thing else in the whole range of literature, excepting his own elegy to Spring, fitted to inspire. " A few mornings ago," he says, "as I was taking my walk on an emmence 342 MICHAEL BRUCE. which commands a view of the Forth, with the vessels sailing along, 1 sat down, and taking out my Latin Bible, opened by accident at a place in the book of Job, ix. 25, ' Now my days are passed away as the swift ships.' Shutting the book, I fell a musing on this affecting comparison. Whether the following hap- pened to me in a dream or waking reverie, I cannot tell ; but I fancied myself on the bank of a river or sea, the opposite side of which was hid from view, being involved in clouds of mist On the shore stood a multitude which no man could number, waiting for passage. I saw a great many ships taking in passengers, and several persons going about in the garb of pilots offering their service. Be- ing ignorant, and curious to know what sill these things meant, I applied to a grave old man who stood by, giving instructions to the departing passengers. His name I remember was the Genius of Human Life. ' 31 y son,' said he, ' you stand on the banks of the stream of Tim? ; all these people are bound for Eter- nity that undiscovered country from whence no traveller ever returns. The country is very large, and divided into two parts : the one is called the Land of Glory, the other the Kingdom of Darkness. The names of these in the garb of pilots are Religion, Virtue, Pleasure. They who are so wise as to choose Reli- gion for their guide have a safe, though frequently a rough passage ; they are at last landed in the happy climes where sighing and sorrow for ever fly away. They have likcwise-a secondary director, Virtue. But there is a spurious Virtue who pretends to govern by himself; but the wretches who trust to him, as well as those who have Pleasure for their pilot are either shipwrecked or cast away on the Kingdom of Darkness. But the vessel in which you must embark approaches you must be gone. Remember what depends upon your conduct' No sooner had he left me than I found myself surrounded by those pilots I men- tioned before. Immediately I forgot all that the old man said to me, and, seduced by the fair promises of Pleasure, chose him for my director. We weighed anchor with a fair gale, the sky serene, the sea calm : innumerable little isles lifted their green heads around us, covered with trees in full blossom ; dissolved in stupid mirth, we were carried on, regardless of the past, of the future unmindful. On the sudden the sky was darkened, the winds roared, the seas raged, red rose the sand from the bottom of the troubled deep ; the angel of the waters lifted up his voice. At that instant a strong ship passed by ; I saw Reli- gion at the helm : ' Come out from among them !' he cried. I and a few others threw ourselves into his ship. The wretches we left were now tossed on the swelling deep; the waters on every side poured through the riven vessel; they cursed the Lord : when lo ! a fiend rose from the deep, and, in a voice like dis- tant thunder, thus spoke : ' I am Abaddon, the first-born of Death ; ye are my prey : open, thou abyss, to receive them !' As he thus spoke they sunk, and the waves closed over their heads. The storm was turned into a calm, and we heard a voice saying, ' Fear not I am with you : when you pass through the waters, they shall not overflow you.' Our hearts were fille- lence taking hold of his horse's reins, reproached him in so sweet a tone for his want of gal- lantry in flying from a lady's castle, that Bruce, enamoured of her beauty, forgot the ri5k which he run, and suffered" lumself to be led away in a kind of triumph to Turnberry. He here remained Ibr fifteen days, and the adventure concluded, as might have been anticipated, by his privately espousing the youthful Countess without having obtained the concurrence of the king, or of any of her relations." I. 2x 34G ROBERT BRUCE. to his estate in England, where he passed the remainder of his days in safe and opulent obscurity ; and the earl of Carrick was commissioned to receive in tlie name of the English king the homage of his own and his father's vassals. So subdued and unpromising were, in their commencement, the fortunes of him upon whom the fortunes of Scotland were finally destined to depend. In the Scots parliament which Edward assembled at Berwick in order to the settlement of his new conquest, he received the homage of great numbers of tuo clergy and laity, arid among the rest of the earl of Carrick. who probably dared not at such a juncture incur even the suspicion of the English king. The exten- sive estates which he held, in virtue of his father's resignation, or by his permis- sion, extending between the firths of Clyde and Solway, and bordering upon England ; the number aud power of his connections and dependants, rendered still more formidable by the discomfiture and depression of the rival family ; to say nothing of the personal talents and ability of the young earl himself, must have rendered him sufficiently liable to the jealous scrutiny of so politic a sove- reign as Edward ; and Bruce, whether or not at this time he entertained designs upon the crown, must have acted with prudence and circumspection in dispelling, even at the expense of his oath, those doubts with which his fidelity would be regarded. On the other hand, the residence of the elder Bruce in England, and the great property possessed by the family in that kingdom, were an actual guarantee in the hands of Edward of the Bruces' loyalty ; nor is it unlikely that he would be swayed by a wise policy in attaching to himself, without any show of distrust or aversion, that party in the state from whom lie had most to i'ear. By so doing he could most effectually destroy any popular feeling which might spring up in favour of claims which could not readily be forgotten, and for the assertion of which he had himself removed the greatest obstacle in the deposition of Baliol. Forbearance on the one side, and siibmissiveness on the other, weie probably dictated to each by opposite though equally strong convictions of expe- diency. During the noble stand made by Wallace against the national defection, the earl of Carrick, thcugh he remained inactive, was not overlooked by the jealous eye of the English government. The bishop of Carlisle, and other barons to whom the peace of the western districts was committed, became suspicious of his fidelity, and summoned him to appear before them, when he made oath on the sacred host and the sword of St. Thomas 10 be faithful and vigilant in the service of Edward. To evince his sincerity, he immediately after laid waste the lands of Sir William Douglas, carrying the wife and family of that knight prisoners into Annpndale. It seems probable that this enterprize was undertaken merely to serve as a pretext for assembling his military retainers; for he had no sooner collected these around him than he abandoned tlu English. interests, and joined the army of the Scots ; alleging, in vindication of his conduct, that the solemn oath which he had so lattly taken had been extorted from him by force, and that in such a case the Pope would, he doubted not, absolve him from its observ- ance. I'mce did not remain long faithful to his new allies. A few months after, at the capitulation of Irvine, he made his peace with Edward, giving what sure- ties were required for his future loyalty. The signal success achieved by the Scots at Stirling, induced Bruce once more to join the national cause ; but the Comyns, now the principal rivals of his family for the vacant throne, being, at the same time, opposed to Edward, he seems to have prudently avoided taking any active share in the contest. Refus- ing to jofn the army, he shut himself up in Ayr castle, by this means ostensibly preserving the communication open between Galloway and the western High- lands. On the approach of Edward into the west, after the battle of Falkirk, ROBERT BRUCE. 347 the earl after destroying the fortress, found it necessary to retire. Displeased as the English king had reason to be with the vacillating conduct of Bruce at this juncture, he did not chastise it otherwise than by taking temporary possession of Lochmaben castle, the fortified patrimonial inheritance of the family. Among the confiscations of property which followed, Annandale and Carrick remained unalienated, a favour which the younger Bruce probably owed to the fidelity and services of his father in the English cause. In the year 1299, not long after the fatal issue of the battle of Falkirk, we find the earl of Carrick associated with John Comyn, the younger of Badenoch, in the regency of Scotland. The motives which actuated Bruce in ihus leaguing himself with a rival, with whom he never hitherto had acted in concert, have been variously represented, and the fact itself hns even been called in question. The consciousness of having lost the confidence of the English king, and a desire, mutually entertained, to humble and destroy the authority of Wallace, which but too well succeeded, could not but influence powerfully the conduct of both parties. 1 liis baleful object accomplished, Bruce seems to have once more resumed the inactive course of policy which he saw fit to maintain in the late struggle ; re- linquishing to the, perhaps, less wary Comyn, the direction of the hazardous power which he seemed so willing to \vield. In the following year, Edward again invaded Scotland, laid waste the districts of Annandale and Carrick, and once more possessed himself of the castle of Lochmaben. Bruce, though, on this occasion, he was almost the only sufferer in the cause which he had espoused, cautiously avoided, by any act of retaliation or effective co-operation with Comyn to widen irremediably the breach with Edward ; and we find, that prior to the advantage gained by his coadjutor at Rosslyn, he had returned once more to the interests of the English party. The victorious campaign of Edward, which in 1304 ended in a more complete subjugation of Scotland than his arms and policy had hitherto been able to effect, justified the prudent foresight, though it tarnished the patriotic fame of the earl of Carrick. His lukewarmness in the cause of the regency, and timely defalcation from it, procured his pardon upon easy terms, and seemed to restore to him, in a great measure, the confidence of Edward, with which he had so repeatedly dared to trifle. His father, the lord of Annandale, dying at this critical time, the young Bruce was allowed to inherit the whole extensive estates of his family in both kingdoms ; and so unequivocally, indeed, had he recovered the favour of the English monarch, that he was held worthy of advising and aiding in the settlement of Scotland as a province under tlie rule of England. Comyn, who had acted throughout with sincerity and constancy, in the trust reposed in him, and whose submission had been a matter of necessity, was subjected to a heavy fine, and fell, in proportion to his rival's elevation, in the confidence and estimation of the king. The versatility of Bruce's conduct, during the various changes and reverses which we have noticed, has been variously commented upon by historians, as they have been led to consider it in a moral or political point of view ; and, in- deed, in whatever way it may be explained, it forms a singular contrast to the honourable, bold, and undeviating career of his after life. In extenuation of such obvious derelictions from principle and consistency, we must not leave out of consideration the effects which peculiar circumstances will sometimes powerfully . operate on the conduct, where the mind has been irresistibly devoted to the at- tainment of some great and engrossing object. That natural irresoluteness, too, by which the boldest spirit may be beset, while meditating the actual and deci- sive plunge into a hazardous enterprise, may cause a seeming vacillation of pur- pose, arising more from a deep sense of the importance of the venture, than from fear of the consequences attending it That Bruce should early entertain a per- 348 ROBERT BRUCE. suasion that his family wre justly entitled to the throne, was every way natural, and \ve have already noticed, that hopes of their actually attaining to it were held out by Edward himself to the lord of Annandale. Nurtured and strength- ened in such feeling, the young aspirant to royalty could not be expected to en- tertain attachment to the house of Baliol ; and must have regarded with still greater aversion and distrust the sovereignty usurped by the power and stratagem of England over the rights and pretensions of all his race. During the struggle, therefore, of those contending interests the independence of Scotland under Baliol, or its subjugation under Edward he necessarily remained more in the situation of a neutral though deeply interested observer, than an active partisan ; the success of either party involving in an almost indifferent degree the high claims, and, it might be, the existing fortunes of his house. Taking these considerations into account, there is little difficulty in reconcil- ing to itself the line of conduct which Bruce had hitherto pursued. By joining heartily with neither party, he prudently avoided committing the fortunes of his family to the hazard of utter destruction, and his right and influence could give, upon any emergency, a necessary and required preponderance to either side. He must have foreseen, too, with secret satisfaction, the consequences which would result to his own advantage from a contest in which the strength and resources of his rivals were mutually wasted, whilst his own energies remained entire, and ready on any favourable opportunity to be called decisively into action. That these were not exerted sooner, the existence of his father down to this period, and his submission to the English government, may suggest a sufficient reason ; and his own accession to the regency, in the name of the deposed Baliol, was a circumstance which could not but affect unfavourably, during its continuance, tlie assertion of his pretensions. Meantime, while Bruce outwardly maintained the semblance of loyalty to Edward, he was not idle in secretly advancing the objects of his own ambition ; and when actually engaged in assisting Edward in the settlement of the Scottish government, he entered into a secret bond of association with Lamberton bishop of St Andrews, whereby the parties became bound to aid each other against all persons whatever, and not to undertake any business of moment unless by mutual advice. No measure on the part of Bruce could be more politic than this was, of enlisting in his cause the power and influence of the church ; and the reader may afterwards have occasion to remark that he owed his success more to their linn adherence to his interest, than to all the efforts of the nobility. Lamberton and his colleagues were more alarmed at the prospect of being subjected to the spiritual supremacy of York or Canterbury, than concerned for the temporal subjugation of their country ; and thus, in the minds of the national clergy, the indepen- dency of the church became intimately associated with the more general cause of popular freedom. In addition to the spiritual power which Lamberton possessed, as head of the Scottish church, the effective aid which he could furnish by call- ing out the military retainers upon the church lands, was far from inconsider- able. Though we are not informed of any other similar contract to the above having been entered into between Bruce and his partizans, there can be little doubt that this was not the only one, and that he neglected no safe expedient to promote and facilitate the enterprize which he contemplated. Notwithstand- ing, however, all the prudent caution and foresight displayed in these prepara- tory measures, the better genius of Bruce would seem utterly to have deserted him at the very critical moment of his fortune when its guidance was most required. Before entering upon the important event to which we have alluded, it will be necessary to state briefly the relative position of the two great parties in the ROBERT BRUCE. 349 kingdom as opposed to each other. John Baliol, supposing his title to have been well founded, had repeatedly renounced all pretensions to the crown of Scotland; and had for several yeais remained a voluntary exile in France, without taking any steps towards the recovery of those rights, of which, it might have been urged, the violence of the king of England had deprived him. He was to be considered, therefore, as having rtot only formally, but virtually, for- feited all claim to the kingdom. His son, Edward, was at that time a minor and a captive. John Comyn, commonly called the Red Comyn, was the son of Marjory, the sister of Baliol, and, setting Baliol aside, was the heir of the pre- tensions of their common ancestor. As regent of Scotland and leader of her armies, Comyn had maintained for many years the unequal contest with Edward ; and he had been the last to lay down his arms and accept conditions of peace from that prince. Though the terms of his submission had been rigorous, he was yet left in possession of large estates, a numerous vassalage, and, what in that warlike age was of consequence, an approved character for courage and conduct in the field. Plausible as were the grounds upon which Gomyn might have founded his claim to the crown, and powerfully as these might have been supported against the usurped sovereignty of England, there was little likelihood that in a compe- tition with Bruce they could ever finally have prevailed. That family, accord- ing to the ancient usage of the kingdom, ought to have been preferred originally to that of Baliol ; and this fact, generally known and acknowledged, as it could not fail to be, would, had they chosen to take advantage of it, have rendered their cause, at any time, a popular one. The award of Edward from the conse- quences which followed upon it, had become odious to the nation ; and the pusillanimity and misfortunes of the abdicated and despised king, wo'ild leave, however undeservedly, their stigma upon his race. It was a curious enough illustration of the deep rooted existence of such a feeling, that, nearly a century afterwards, a king of Scotland who happened to possess the same unfortunate name of John, saw fit upon his coronation to change it for another, less ominous of evil in the recollections of his subjects. What might have been the fate of the contest, had it taken place, between two such rivals, it is now needless to inquire. We have seen that Bruce, at the crisis at which we have arrived, was possessed of those advantages unimpaired, of which the other, in the late struggle, had been, in a great measure, deprived ; and, there is reason to believe, that Ccmyn, whose conduct had been consistent and honourable, felt himself injured and indignant at a preference which he might suppose his rival had unworthily earned. Thus under impressions of wrong and filled with jealous appiehensions, for which there was much apparent and real cause, the Red Comyn might be presumed willing, upon any inviting occasion, to treat Bruce as an enemy whom, by every means in his power, it was his interest to circumvent or destroy. The league into which Bruce had entered with Lamberton, and perha] other transactions of a similar nature, were not so secretly managed, but that suspi- cions were awakened ; and this is said to have led to an important conference between these rivals on the subject of their mutual pretensions. At this meeting, Bruce, after describing in strong terms the miserable effects of the enmity which had so long subsisted between their different families, by which they themselves were not only deprived of station, but their country of freedom, proposed, as the best means, both of averting future calamity and for restoring their own privi- leges and the people's rights, that they should henceforward enter into a good understanding and bond of amity with each other. " Support my title to the crown," he is represented to have said, "and I will give you my lands; or, give me your lands and I will support your claim.'' Corny n agreed to wave hii 350 ROBERT BRUCE. right, and accept the lands ; and the conditions having been drawn up in form of indenture, were sealed by both parties, and confirmed by their mutual oaths of fidelity and secrecy. Bruce shortly afterwards repaired to the English court, where he still enjoyed the confidence and favour of the king ; and whilst there, Ccmyn, from what motive is unknown, but probably from the design of ruining a rival whom he secretly feared and detested, revealed his knowledge of the conspiracy to Edward. The king, upon receiving this information, thought fit to dissemble his belief in its veracity, with a view, it is conjectured, of drawing within his power the bro- thers of Bruce, previously to striking the important blow which he meditated. With a shrewdness and decision, however, peculiar to his character, he frankly questioned Bruce upon the truth of Comyn's accusation, adducing, at the same time the letters and documents which he had received as evidences of the fact. The Earl, much as he might feel staggered at the sudden disclosure of Comyn's treachery, or alarmed at the imminent peril of his situation, had recollection enough remaining to penetrate the immediate object of the king in this insidious scrutiny, and presence of mind to baffle the sagacity by which it was sug- gested. Though taken so completely by surprise, he betrayed no oatward signs of guilt or confusion ; and succeeded by his mild and judicious answers in re- establishing to all appearance the confidence of the crafty monarch ; who had. indeed, his reasons for this seeming reliance, but who all along was of too sus- picious a nature to be so easily convinced. He had in fact determined upon the Earl's ruin ; and, having one evening drank freely, was indiscreet enough to disclose his intentions in presence of some of the nobles of his court. The Earl of Gloucester, a kinsman of Bruce, chanced either to be present, or to have early notice of his friend's danger, and, anxious to save him, yet not daring, in so serious a matter, too rashly to compromise his own safety, sent to him a pair of gilded spurs and a few pieces of money, as if he had borrowed them from him the day before. Danger is said to be an acute interpreter ; and Bruce divined correctly that the counsel thus symbolically communicated warned him to instant flight Taking his measures, therefore, with much privacy, and accompanied by his secretary and one groom, he set out for Scotland. On approaching the western marches the small party encountered a messenger on foot, whose deport- ment struck them as suspicious. He was searched ; and proved to be an emis- sary sent by Comyn with letters to the King of England. The man was killed upon the spot ; and Bruce, now possessed of substantial proofs of the perfuly of his rival, pressed forward to his castle of Lochmaben, which he is reported to have reached on the fifth day after his precipitate flight from London. These events occurred in the month of February, 1306 ; at which time, accord- ing to a regulation of the new government, certain English judges were holding their courts at Dumfries. Thither Bruce immediately repaired, and finding Comyn in the town, as he had expected, requested a private interview with him, which was accorded ; but, either from some inward misgiving on the one side, or a desire to impress assurance of safety on the other, the meeting took place near the high altar in the convent of the Minorite Friars. Bruce is said to have here passionately reproached Comyn for his treachery, to which the other answered by flatly giving him the lie. The words Mere scarcely uttered, when the Earl, giving a loose to the ungovernable fury which he had hitherto restrain- ed, drew his dagger and stabbed, but not mortally, his unguarded opponent. Instantly hastening from the church, he called eagerly to his attendants for his horse. Lindsay and Kirkpatrick, by whom he had been accompanied, seeing him pale and agitated, anxiously inquired the cause. " I doubt I have slain Comyn," replied the Earl. " You doubt?" cried Kirkpatrick fiercely, ' L'sc ROBERT BRUCE. 351 mak sicker ; and rushing into the sanctuary, he found Comyn still alive, but helpless and bleeding upon the steps of the high altar. The dying victim was ruthlessly dispatched on the sacred spot where he lay; and, almost at the same moment, Sir Robert Comyn, the uncle, entering the convent upon the noise and alarm of the scuffle, shared in a similar fate. The tumult had now become general throughout the town ; and the judges who held their court in a hall of the castle, not knowing what to fear, but believing their lives to be in immediate danger, hastily barricadoed the doors. Bruce, assembling his followers, sur- rounded the castle, and threatening to force an entrance with fire, obliged those within to surrender, and permitted them to depart in safety from Scotland. That this fatal event fell out in the heat and reckless passion of the moment, there can be no doubt Goaded as he had been to desperation by the ruin which he knew to be impending over him, and even insulted personally by the individual who had placed him in such jeopardy, Bruce dared hardly, in that age of superstitious observance, to have committed so foul an act of sacrilegious murder. In the imperfectly arranged state of his designs, without concert among his friends, or preparation for defence, the assassination of the first noble in the land, even without the aggravations which in this instance particularized the deed, could not but have threatened the fortune of his cause with a brief and fatal issue. He knew, himself, that the die of his future life uas now cast ; and that the only alternative left, upon which he had to make election, was to be a fugitive or a kin*. Without hesitation, he at once determined to assert his claim o o to the Scottish crown. When Bruce, thus inevitably pressed by circumstances, adopted tht only course by which there remained a chance of future extrication and honour, he had not a single fortress at his command besides those two patrimonial ones of Lochmaben and Kildrummy ; the latter situated in Aberdeenshire, at too great a distance from the scene of action to prove of service. He had prepared no system of offensive warfare ; nor did it seem that, in the beginning, he should be even able to maintain himself on the defensive, with any hope of success. Three earls only, those of Lenox, Errol, and Athole, joined his standard ; Ran- dolph, the nephew of Bruce, who afterwards became the renowned Earl of Moray, Christopher of Seaton,his brother-in-law; Sir James Douglas, whose fate became afterwards so interestingly associated with that of his master, and about ten other barons then of little note, but who were destined to lay the foundations of some of the most honourable families in the kingdom, constituted, with the bro- thers of the royal adventurer, the almost sole power against which such fearful odds were presently to be directed the revenge of the widely connected and powerful house of Comyn, the overwhelming force of England, and the fulmina- tions of the church. Without other resource than what lay in his own undaunted resolution, and in the untried fidelity and courage of his little band, Bruc ascended the throne of his ancestors, at Scone, on the 27th day of March, I. The ceremony of the coronation was performed with what state the exigency and disorder of the moment permitted. The Bishop of Glasgow supplied his own wardrobe the robes in which Robert was arrayed on the occasion ; a slight coronet of gold was made to serve in absence of the hereditary ci which, along with the other symbols of royalty, had been carried off by E into England. A banner, wrought with the arms of Baliol, was dehvere the Bishop of Glasgow to the new king, beneath which he received of the earls and knights by whom he was attended. The earls ot Hie, from a remote antiquity, had possessed the privilege of crowning the kings i of . but at this time, Duncan, the representative of that family, favoured the Englu interest. His sister, however, the Countess of Buchan, ilh a boldness and 052 ROBERT BRUCE. spirit characteristic of the days of chivalry, secretly withdrawing from her hus- band, repaired to Scone, and asserted the pretensions of her ancestors. It is not unlikely that this circumstance added to the popular interest felt for the young sovereign. The crown was a second time placed on the head of Bruce by the hands of the Countess ; who was afterwards doomed to suiter, through a long series of insult and oppression, for the adventurous and patriotic act which has preserved her name to posterity. Edward resided with his court at Winchester when the intelligence of the mur- der of Corny n, and the revolt of Bruce reached his ears. That monarch, whose long career of successful conquest was once again to be broken and endangered, had reached that period of life when pence and tranquillity even to the most indomitable spirits become not only desirable but coveted blessings. The great natural strength of his constitution had, besides, ill withstood the demands which long arduous military service, and the violent excitations of ambition had made upon it He was become of unwieldy bulk, and so infirm in his limbs as to be unable to mount on horseback, or walk without difficulty. Yet the spirit which had so strongly actuated the victor on former occasions did not desert the king on the present emergency. He immediately despatched a message to the Pope, demanding in aid of his own temporal efforts, the assistant thunder of the holy see, a requisition which Clement V., who had formerly been the subject of Ed- ward, readily complied with. The sentence of excommunication was denounc' d against Bruce and all his adherents, and their possessions placed under the dreaded ban of interdiction. The garrison towns of Berwick and Carlisle were strengthened ; and the Earl of Pembroke, who was appointed guardian, was ordered to proceed against the rebels in Scotland, at the head of a small army, hastily collected, for the occasion. Those were but preparatory measures. Upon Edward's arrival in London, he conferred knighthood upon his son the Prince of Wales, and nearly three hun- dred other persons, consisting, principally, of young men selected from families of rank throughout the kingdom ; and conducted the ceremony with a pomp and magnificence well calculated to rouse the martial ardour and enterprise of his subjects. At a splendid banquet to which his nobility and the new made knights were invited, the aged king is recorded to have made a solemn vow to the God of heaven, that he would execute severe vengeance upon Bruce for the daring outrage which he had committed against God and his church ; declaring, that when he had performed this duty, he would never more unsheath his sword against a Christian enemy ; but should devote the remainder of his days to waging war against the Saracens for the recovery of the Holy Land, thence never to return from that sanctified warfare. Addressing his son, he made him promise, that, should he die before the accomplishment of his revenge, he should carry bit body with the army, and not commit it to the earth, until a complete victory over his enemies should be obtained. Pembroke, the English guardian, took early possession of the trust which had been confided to him ; and marching his small army upon Perth, a walled and strongly fortified town, he there established his head-quarters. Bruce, during the short interval which had elapsed since his coronation, had not been altogether unsuccessful in recruiting the numbers and establishing order among his band of followers; nor did he think it prudent to delay engaging this portion of the English forces, greatly superior as they were, in every respect, to his o\\n, prompted perhaps by the desire of striking an early and effectual blow, by which he might give credit and confirmation to his cause before the important succours expected by the enemy should arrive. On drawing near Perth, he sent a chal- lenge, according to the chivalrous practice of the age, defying the English com- ROBERT BRUCE. 353 inander to battle in the open field Pembroke returned for answer, that the day was too far spent, but that he would be ready to join battle on the morrow. Satisfied with this acceptance, Robert drew off his army to the neighbouring wood of Methven, where he encamped for the night; parties were dispersed in search of provisions, and the others, throwing aside their armour, employed themselves in making the necessary arrangements for comfort and repose. By a very culpable neglect, or a most unwarrantable reliance on the promise of the English Earl, the customary watches against surprise were either altogether omitted, or very insufficiently attended to. Pembroke having, by his scouts, intelligence of this particular, and of the negligent posture of the Scottish troops, drew out his forces from Perth, towards the close of day ; and gaining the un- guarded encampment without observation, succeeded in throwing the whole body into complete and irremediable confusion. The Scots made but a feeble and unavailing resistance, and were soon routed and dispersed in every direc- tion. Philip de Mowbray is said to have unhorsed the king, whom he seized, calling aloud that he had got the new made king ; when Robert was gallantly rescued from his perilous situation by Chrystal de Seton his body esquire. Ano- ther account affirms that Robert was thrice unhorsed in the conflict, and thrice remounted by Simon Frazer. So desperate, indeed, were the personal risks which the King encountered on that disastrous night in the fruitless efforts which he made to rally his dismayed and discomfited followers, that, for a time, being totally unsupported, he was made prisoner by John de Haliburton, a Scotsman in the English army, but who set him at liberty on discovering who he was. To have sustained even a slight defeat at the present juncture would have proved of incalculable injury to Bruce's cause : the miserable overthrow at Meth- ven, seemed to have terminated it for ever ; and to have left little else for Edward to do, unless to satisfy at his leisure the vindictive retribution which he had so solemnly hound himself to execute. Several of Robert's truest and bravest friends were made prisoners ; among whom were Haye, Barclay, Frazer, Inch- martin, Sommerville, and Randolph. With about five hundred men, all that he was able to muster from the broken and dispirited remains of his army, Bruce penetrated into the mountainous country of Athole. In this small, but attached band, he still numbered the Earls of Athole and Errol, Sir James Douglas, Sir Neil Campbell, and his own brave brothers, Edward and Nigel. Bruce and his small party, reduced indifferently to the condition of proscribed and hunted outlaws, endured the extremity of hardships among the wild and bar- ren fastnesses to which they had retreated for shelter. The season of the year, it being then the middle of summer, rendered such a life, for a time, possible ; but as the weather became less favourable, and their wants increased in propor- tion, they were constrained to descend into the low country of Aberdeenshire. Here Robert met with his queen and many other ladies who had fled thither for safety ; and who, with an affectionate fortitude resolved, in the company of their fathers and husbands, to brave the same evils with which they found them encom- passed. The respite which the royal party here enjoyed was of brief duration. Learning that a superior body of English was advancing upon them, they were forced to leave the low country and take refuge in the mountainous district of Breadalbane. To these savage and unhospitable retreats they were accompanied by the queen and the other ladies related to the party and to their broken for- tunes by ties, it would seem, equally strong ; and again had the royalists to sus- tain, under yet more distressing circumstances, the rigorous severity of their lot. Hunting and fishing were the precarious, though almost the only means, which they had of sustaining life ; and the good Sir James Douglas is particularly noticed by the minute Barbour for his success in these pursuits ; and the devoted 354 ROBERT BRUCE. ieal which he manifested in procuring every possible alleviation and comfort for his forlorn and helpless companions. While the royalists thus avoided the immediate peril which had threaleni'd them from one quarter, hy abiding in those natural strong-holds which th.-ir enemy could not force, they almost inevitably came in contact witli another dan- ger no less imminent They fell upon Charybdis seeking to avoid Scylia. The Lord of Lorn, upon the borders of whose territories they lay, was nearly con- nected by marriage with the family of the murdered Comyn : and, as might be expected, entertained an implacable hatred towards the person and the cause of the Scottish king. Having early intelligence of the vicinity, numbers, and necessi- ties of the fugitive royalists, this powerful baron collected together a body of nearly a thousand of his maraal dependants, men well acquainted with the advan- tages and difficulties of such a country, and besetting the passes, obliged tl:e king to come to battle in a narrow deh'le where the horse of the party could possibly prove of no service, but were indeed an inctimbrance. Considerable loss was sustained on the king's side in the action ; and Sir James Douglas and de la Haye were both wounded. The king dreading the total destruction of his followers, ordered a retreat; and himself boldly taking post in the rear, by desperate courage, strength, and activity, succeeded in checking the fury of the pursuers, and in extricating his party. The place of this memorable contest is still pointed out, and remembered by the name of Dairy, or the king's field. The almost incredible displays of personal prowess and address which Robert made on this occasion, are reported to have drawn forth the admiration even of his deadly enemies. In one of those repeated assaults which he was obliged to make in order to repress the impetuous pursuit of the assailants, he was beset, all at once, by three armed antagonists. This occurred in a pass, formed by a loch on the one side, and a precipitous bank on the other, and so narrow as scarcely to allow of two horses riding a-breast. One seized the king's horse by the bridle ; but by a blow, which severed his arm in two, was almost instantly dis- abled. Another got hold of the rider's foot within the slirrtip iron wilh the purpose of unhorsing him ; but the king standing up in the stirrup, and urginir his steed forward, dragged the unfortunate assailant to the ground. The thiid person leaped up behind him in hope of pinioning his arms and making him prisoner, or of despatching him with his dagger ; but turning round, and exert- ing his utmost strength, Robert forced him forwards upon the horse's neck an about this time, joined the king with what followers he had been able to muster among the vassals of his family. Pembroke, the guardian, at the head of a considerable body of men, no took the field against Robert ; and w;is joined by John of Lorn, with a body of eight hundred Highlanders, men well calculated for that irregular species of warfare to which Bruce was necessitated to have recourse. Lorn is said to have had along with him a blood-hound which had once belonged to the king, and which was so strongly attached to its old master, and familiar with his scent, that if once it got upon his track it would never part from it for any other. These two armies advanced separately, Pembroke carefully keeping to the low and open country, where his cavalry could act with e:Fect; while Lorn, by a circuit- ous rout, endeavoured to gain the rear of the king's party. The Highland chieftain so well succeeded in this manoeuvre, that before Robert, whose atten- tion had been wholly occupied by the forces under Pembroke, was aware of his danger, he found himself environed by two hostile bodies of troops, either of which was greatly superior to his own. In this emergency, the king, having appointed a place of rendezvous, divided his men into three companies, and ordered them to retreat as they best might, by different routes, that thus, by dis- tracting the attention of the enemy, they might have the better chance of escape. Lorn arriving at the place where the Scottish army had separated, set loose the blood-hound, which, falling upon the king's scent, led the pursuers imme- diately on the track which he had taken. The king finding himself pursued, again subdivided his remaining party into three, but without effect, for the hound still kept true to the track of its former master. The case now appearing desperate, Robert ordered the remainder of his followers to disperse themselves; and, accompanied by only one person, said to have been his foster-brother, endeavoured by this last means to frustrate the pursuit of the enemy. In this he was of course unsuccessful ; and Lorn, who now saw the hound choose that direction which only two men had taken, knew certainly that one of these must be the king ; and despatched five of his swiftest men after them with orders either to slay them, or delay their flight till others of the party came to their assistance. Robert, finding these men gaining hotly upon him, faced about, and, with the aid of his companion, slew them all Lorn's men were now so close upon him that the king could perceive they were led on by means of a blood-hound. Fortunately, he and his companion had reached the near covert of a wood, situated in a valley through which ran a brook or rivulet. Taking advantage of this circumstance, by which they well knew the artifice of their pursuers would be defeated, Bruce and his foster-brother, before turning into any of the surrounding thickets for shelter, travelled in the water of the stream so far as they judged necessary to dissipate and destroy die strong scent upon which the hound had proceeded. The highland chieftain, who was straightway directed to the rivulet, along which the fugitives had diverged, here found that the hound had lost its scent ; and aware of the difficulty and fruitlessness of a further search, was reluctantly compelled to quit the chase and retire. By ano- ther account, the escape of Bruce from the blood-hound is told thus : An archer ROBERT BRUCE. who had kept near to the king in his flight, having discovered that by moans of the hound Robert's course had been invariably tracked, stole into a thicket and from thence despatched the animal with an arrow ; after which he made his escape undiscovered into the wood which the king had entered. Bruce reached in safety the rendezvous of his party, after having narrowly escaped from the treachery of three men by whom, however, his faithful coin- panion and foster-brother was slain. The English, under the impression that the Scottish army was totally dispersed, neglected, in a great measure the pre- cautions necessary in their situation. Robert having intelligence of the state of security in which they lay, succeeded in surprising a body of two hundred, care- lessly cantoned at some little distance from the main army, and put the greater part of them to the sword. Pembroke, shortly after, retired with his whole forces, towards the borders of England, leaving spies behind him to watch the motions of his subtile enemy. By means of these he was not long in gamin-* such information as led him to hope the surprisal of the king and his party! Approaching with great secrecy a certain wood in Glentruel, where Robert then lay, he was on the point of accomplishing his purpose ; when the Scots happily in time discovering their danger, rushed forth unexpectedly and furiously upon their assailants and put them completely to flight Pembroke, upon this de- feat, retreated with his army to Carlisle. Robert encouraged by these successes, and by the general panic which he saw to prevail among the enemy, now ventured down upon the low country ; and was soon enabled to reduce the districts of Kyle, Carrick, and Cunningham to his obedience. Sir Philip Mowbray having been dispatched with a thousand men to make head against this rapid progress, was attacked at advantage by Douglas with so much spirit that, after a loss of sixty men, his whole force was routed, himself narrowly escaping in the pursuit Pembroke, by this time alarmed for the safety and credit of his government, determined again to take the field in person. Putting himself at the head of a strong body of cavalry, he advanced into Ayrshire, and came up with the army of Bruce then encamped on Loudon-hill. The Scottish king, though his forces were still greatly inferior in number, and consisted entirely of infantry, deter- mined on the spot on M'hich he had posted himself, to give battle to the English commander. He had selected his ground on this occasion with great judgment, and had taken care, by strongly entrenching the flanks of his position, to render as ineffectual as possible the numbers and cavalry of the enemy. His force amounted in all to about six hundred men who were entirely spearmen ; that of Pembroke did not amount to less than three thousand well mounted and armed soldiery, displaying an imposing contrast to-the small but unyielding mass who stood ready to oppose them. Pembroke, dividing his army into two lines or divisions, ordered the attack to be commenced; when the van, having their lances couched, advanced at full gallop to the charge. The Scots sustained the shock with determined firmness, and a desperate conflict ensuing, the English van was at length driven fairly back upon the rear or second division. This vigorous repulse decided the fortune of the day. The Scots, now the assailants, followed up closely the advantage which they had gained, and the rear of the English, panic-struck and disheartened, began to give way, and finally to retreat. The confusion and rout soon becoming general, Pembroke's whole army was put to flight; a considerable number being slain in the battle and pursuit and many made prisoners. The loss on the part of the Scots is said to have been extremely imall. Three days after the battle of Loudon-hill, Bruce encountered Montherraur nt the head of a body of English, whom he defeated with great slaughter, and i. 2 z 3G2 ROBERT BRUCE. obliged to take refuge in the castle of Ayr. He, for some time, blockaded this place ; but retired at the approach of succours from England. These successes, though in themselves* limited, proved, in effect, of the utmost importance to Ro- bert's cause, by conferring upon it that stability of character in- men's mind.- which, hitherto, it had never attained. The death of Edward I., at this period was another event which could not but favourably affect the fortunes of Scotland at the very moment when the whole force of England was collected for its inva- sion. That great monarch's resentment and hatred towards Bruce and his patriotic followers did not die with him. With his last breath, he gave orders that his dead body should accompany the army in its march into Scotland, and remain unburied until that country was totally subdued. Edward II. disre- garded this singular injunction, and had the body of his father more becomingly disposed of in the royal sepulchre at Westminster. Edward II. on his accession to the throne of England soon proved himself but ill-qualified for the conduct of those great designs which his father's demise had devolved upon him. Of a weak and obstinate disposition, he was incapable of appreciating, far less of acting up to the dying counsels and injunctions of his heroic father. His utter disregard for these was, indeed, manifested in the very first act of his reign ; that of recalling his unworthy favourite Piers Gaves- toff from exile, who with other minions of his own cast was from that moment to take the place of all the faithful and experienced ministers of the late king, and exercise a sole and unlimited sway over the weak and capricious humours oi' their master. Edward by this measure laid an early foundation for the disgust and alienation of his English subjects. His management in regard to Scotland was equally unpropitious. After wasting much valuable time at Dumfries and Roxburgh in receiving the homage of the Scottish barons; he advanced with his great army as far as Cumnock in Ayrshire, from whence, without striking a blow, he retreated into England, and disbanded his whole forces. A campaign so use- less and inglorious, after all the mighty preparation spent upon it, could not but have a happy effect upon the rising fortunes of the Scottish patriots, while it dis- heartened all in Scotland who from whatever cause favoured the English interest. The English king had no sooner retired, than Bruce invaded Galloway, and, wherever opposed, wasted the country with fire and sword. The fate of his two brothers, who hi'id here fallen into the hands of the chieftain Macdowal, most proba- bly influenced the king in this act of severe retribution. The Earl of Rich- mond, whom Edward had newly created guardian, was sent to oppose his pro- gress, upon which Robert retired into the north of Scotland, leaving Sir James Douglas in the south, for the purpose of reducing the forests of Selkirk and Jed- burgh to obedience. The Ring, without encountering almost any resistance, over-ran great part of the north, seizing, in his progress, the castle of Inverness and many other fortified places, which he ordered to be entirely demolished. Returning southward, he was met by the Earl .of Buchan at the head of a tumul- tuary body of Scots and English, whom, at the first charge, he put to flight In the course of this expedition, the king became affected with a grievous illness, which reduced his bodily and mental strength to that degree, that little hopes were entertained of his recovery. Ancient historians have attributed this malady to the effects of the cold, famine, poor lodging and hardships, to which, ever since the defeat at Methven, the king had been subjected. Buchan, encouraged by the intelligence which he received of the king's illness, and eager to efface the dishonour of his late retreat, again assembled his nume- rous followers; and being joined by Mowbray, an English commander, came up with the king's forces, then strongly posted near Slaines, on the east coast of Aberdeenshiro The royalists avoided battle ; and beginning to be straitened EGBERT BRUCE. 303 for provisions retired in good order, firet to Strathbogie, and afterwards to In- verury. By this time the violence of the king's disorder had abated, and he began by slow degrees to recover strength. Buchan, who still watched for an opportunity of attack, advanced to Old Meldrum; and Sir David Brechin, who had joined himself to his party, came upon Inverury suddenly with a detachment of troops, cut off several of the royalists in the outskirts of the town, and retired without loss. This military bravado instantly roused the dormant energies of the king ; and, though too weak in body to mount on horseback without assist- ance, he resolved to take immediate vengeance on his insolent enemy. Sup- ported by two men on each side of his saddle, the king took the direction of !iis troops, and encountering the forces of Buchan, though much superior to his own, put them to flight with great slaughter. The agitation of spirits which Robert sustained on this occasion, is said to have restored him to health. Ad- vancing into the country of his discomfited enemy, Bruce took ample revenge of all the injuries which its possessor had inflicted upon him. About this time the castle of Aberdeen was surprized by the citizens, the gar- rison put to the sword, and the fortifications razed to the foundation. A body of English having been collected for the purpose of chastising this bold exploit, they were spiritedly met on their march by the inhabitants, routed, and a con. siderable number taken prisoners, who were afterwards, says Boece, hangfcd upon gibbets around the town, as a terror to their companions. A person named Philip the Forester of Platane, having collected a small body of patriots, suc- ceeded, about the same period, in taking the strong castle of Forfar by escalade. The English garrison were put to the sword, and the fortifications, by order of the king, destroyed. 31any persons of note, who had hitherto opposed Bruce, or who, from prudential considerations, had submitted to the domination of Eng- land, now openly espoused the cause of their country. Among the rest Sir David Brechin, the king's nephew, upon the overthrow at Inverury, submitted himself to the authority of his uncle. While Robert was thus successfully engaged in the north ; his brother Edward, at the head of a considerable force, invaded Galloway. He was opposed by Sir Ingram Umphraville an:! Sir John de St John with about twelve hundred men. A bloody battle ensued at the water of Cree, in which the English, after sustain- ing severe loss, were constrained to fly. Great slaughter was made in the p'ir- suit, and the two commanders escaped with difficulty to the castle of Butel, on the sen-coast De St John from thence retired into England, where raising a force of fifteen hundred men, he returned with great expedition into Galloway in the hope of finding his victorious enemy unprepared for hi* reception. Edward Bruce, however, had notice of his movements; and with the chivalric valour or temerity which belonged to his character, he resolved boldly to over-reach the enemy in their own stratagem. Entrenching his infantry in a strong position in the line of inarch of the assailants; he himself, with fifty horsemen well harnessed, suc- ceeded in gaining their rear ; with the intent of falling suddenly and unexpect- edly upon them so soon as his entrenched camp should be assailed. Edward was favoured in this hazardous mano?uvre by a mist so thick that no object could be discerned at the distance of a bow-shot: but, before his design could be brought to bear, the vapours suddenly chasing away, left his small body fully discovered to the English. Retreat with any chance of safety was impossible, and to the reckless courage of their leader, suggested itself not The small com- pany no sooner became visible to their astonished and disarrayed foes, than, raising a loud shout, they rushed furiously to the attick, and after one or two more desperate charges, put them to rout Thus successful in the field, Edward expelled the English garrisons, reduced the rebellious natives with fire and ROBERT BRUCE. sword, and compelled the whole district to yield submission to the authority of his brother. Douglas, after achieving many advantages in the south, among which, the suc- cessive captures of his own castle in Douglasdale were the most remarkable, about this time, surprised and made prisoners Alexander Stewart of Bonkil and Tho- mas Randolph, the king's nephew. When Randolph, who from the defeat at Methven, had adhered faithfully to the English interest, was brought before his sovereign, the king is reported to have said; "Nephew, you have been an apos- tate for a season ; you must now be reconciled." " You require penance of me," replied Randolph fiercely, " yourself rather ought to do penance. Since you challenged the king of England to war, you ought to have asserted your title in the open field, and not to have betaken yourself to cowardly ambuscades." " That may be hereafter, and perchance ere long," the king calmly replied ; ''meanwhile, it is fitting that your proud words receive due chastisement; and that you be taught to know my right and your own duty.'' After this rebuke, Randolph was ordered for a time into close confinement. This singular inter- view may have been preconcerted between the parties, for the purpose of cloak- ing under a show of constraint, Randolph's true feelings in joining the cause of his royal relative. Certain it is, his confinement was of brief duration ; and in all the after acts of his life, he made evident with how hearty and zealous a devotion he had entered on his new and more honourable field of enterprise. Shortly after the rejunction of Douglas, Bruce carried his arms into the terri- tory of Lorn, being now able to take vengeance on the proud chieftain, who, after the defeat at Methven, had so nearly accomplished his destruction. To op- pose this invasion the lord of Lorn collected a force of about two thousand men, whom he posted in ambuscade in a defile, having the high mountain of Cruachen Ben on the one side, and a precipice overhanging Lochawe on the other. This pass was so narrow in some places, as not to admit of two horsemen passing a-breast Robert who had timely information of the manner in which this road was beset, through which he must necessarily pass, detached one half of his army, consisting entirely of light armed troops and archers, under Douglas, with orders to make a circuit of the mountain and so gain the high ground in the rear and flank of the enemy's position. He himself with the rest of his troops entered the pass, where they were soon attacked from the ambushment with great fury. This lasted not long ; for the party of Douglas quickly appearing on the heights immediately above them and in their rear, the men of Lorn were cast into inevi- table confusion. After annoying the enemy with repeated flights of arrows, Douglas descended the mountain and fell upon them sword in hand; the king, at the same time, pressing upon them from the pass. They were defeated with great slaughter ; and John of Lorn, who had planned this unsuccessful ambush, after witnessing its miscarriage from a little distance, soon after put to sea and retired into England. Robert laid waste the whole district of Lorn ; and gain- ing possession of Dunstaffhage, the principal place of strength belonging to the family, garrisoned it strongly with his own men. While Bruce and his partizans were thus successfully engaged in wresting their country from the power of England, and in subduing the refractory spirit of some of their own nobility, every thing was feeble and fluctuating in the councils of their enemies. In less than a year, Edward changed or re-appointed the gover- nors of Scotland six different times. Through the mediation of Philip king of France, a short truce was finally agreed upon between Edward and Robert ; but infractions having been made on both sides, Bruce laid siege to the castle of Rutherglen. In February, 1310, a truce was once more agreed upon; notwith- standing which John de Segrave was appointed to the guardianship of Scot- ROBE UT BRUCE. 3G5 land on both sides of the Forth ; and had the warlike power of the north of England placed at his disposa'. It was early in the same year that the clergy of Scotland assembled in a provincial council, and issued a declaration to all the faithful, bearing, that the Scottish nation, seeing the kingdom betrayed and enslaved, had assumed Robert Bruce for their king, and that the clergy had willingly dune homage to him in that character. During these negotiations, hostilities were never entirely laid aside on either side. The advantages of the warfare, however, were invariably on the side of Bruce, who now seemed preparing to attack Perth, at that time an important fortress, and esteemed the capital of Scotland. Roused to activity by this dan- ger, Edward made preparations for the immediate defence and succour of that place, lie also appointed the Earl of Ulster to the command of a body of Irish troops who were to assemble at Dublin, and from thence invade Scotland ; and the whole military array of England was ordered to meet the king at Berwick ; but the English nobles disgusted with the government of Edward, and detesting Jiis favourite Gaveston, repaired un-.villingly and slowly to the royal standard. Before his preparations could be brought to bear, the season for putting to sea had passed, and Edward was obliged to countermand the forces under the Earl of Ulster ; still resolving, however, to invade Scotland in person, with the large army which he had collected upon the border. Towards the end of autumn the Eng- lish commenced their march, and directing their course through the forest of Selkirk to Biggar, thence are said to have penetrated as far as Renfrew. Not finding the enemy, in any body, to oppose their progress, and unable from the season of the year, aggravated, as it was, by a severe famine which at that very time afflicted the land, to procure forage and provisions, the army making no abode in those parts, retreated by the way of Linlithgow and the Lothians to Berwick ; where Edward, after this ill-concerted and fruitless expedition, re- mained inactive for eight months. Bruce, during this invasion, cautiously avoided coming to an open engagement with the greatly superior forces of the enemy ; contenting himself with sending detached parties to hang upon their rear, who, as opportunity offered, might harass or cut off the marauding and foraging parties of the English. In one of these sudden assaults the Scots put to the sword a body of three hundred of the enemy before any sufficient force could be brought up for their rescue. About this time the castle of Linlithgow, a place of great utility to the Eng- lish, as being situated midway between Stirling and Edinburgh, was surprised by the stratagem of a poor peasant named William Binnock. This man, having been employed to lead hay into the fort, placed a party of armed friends in ambush as near as possible to the gate ; and concealing under his seeming load of hay, eight armed men, advanced to the castle, himself walking carelessly by the side of the wain, while a servant led the cattle in front. When the carriage was fairly in the gateway, so that neither the gates of the castle could be closed nor the portcullis let down, the person in front who had charge of the oxen cut the soam or withy rope by which the animals were attached to the wain, which thus, instantly, became stationary. Binnock, making a concerted signal, his armed friends leaped from under the hay, and mastered the sentinels ; and be- ing immediately joined by the other party in ambush, the garrison, almost without resistance, were put to the sword, and the place taken. Binnock was well rewarded by the king for this daring and successful exploit ; and the castle was ordered to be demolished. Robert, finding that his authority was now well established at home, and that Edward was almost entirely engrossed by the dissensions which had sprung up amony, his own subjects, resolved, by an invasion of England, to retaliate in 306 ROBERT BRUCE. some measure the miseries with which that country had so long afflicted his king- dom. Assembling a considerable army, he advanced into the bishopric, of Dur- ham, laying waste the country with fire and sword ; and giving up the whole district to the unbounded and reckless license of the soldiery. " 'lhus, says Fordun, " by the blessing of God, and by a just retribution of providence, were the perh'dious English, who had despoiled and slaughtered many, in their turn subjected to punishment." Edward II. made a heavy complaint to the Tope, of the " horrible ravages, depredations, burnings, and murders " committed by " Robert Bruce and his accomplices" in this inroad, in which "neither age nor sex were spared, nor even the immunities of ecclesiastical liberty respected.'' The papal thunder had, however, already descended harmless on the ticottisli king and his party ; and the time had arrived, when the nation eagerly hoped, and the English might well dread the coming of that storm, whic.li should avenge, by a requital alike bloody and indiscriminate, those wrongs which, without di*. tiiK lion, had been so mercilessly inflicted upon it. Soon after his return from England, Robert, again drawing an army together, laid siege to Perth, a place in those days so strongly fortified, that, with a suffi- cient garrison, and abundance of provisions and military stores, it mi^ht bid defiance to any open force that could be brought against it. Having lain before the town for six weeks, the king seeing no prospect of being able to reduce it by main force, raised the siege, and retired to some distance, as if resolved to desist from the enterprize. He had gained intelligence, however, that the ditch which surrounded the town was ford able in one place, of which he had taken ac- curate notice. Having provided scaling ladders of a sufficient length, he, with a chosen body of infantry, returned after an absence of eight days, and ap- proached the works. The self-security of the garrison, who, from hearing no- thing of Robert for some days, were thrown entirely ofi' their guard, no less than the darkness of the night, favoured his enterprise. Robert himself carrying a ladder was the foremost to enter the ditch, the water of which reached breast high, and the second to mount the walls when the ladders were applied. A French knight who at this time served under the Scottish king, having witnessed the gallant example set by his leader, is reported to have exclaimed with enthu- siasm, " What shall we say of our lords of France, that with dainty living, was- sail, and revelry pass their time, when so worthy a knight, through his yiv.it chivalry, puts his life into so great hazard to win a wretched hamlet." Saying tliis, he, with the lively valour of his nation, threw himself into the fosse, and shared in the danger and glory of the enterprise. The walls were scaled and the town taken almost without resistance. By the king's orders quarter was given to all who laid down their arms; and in accordance with the admirable policy which he had hitherto invariably pursued, the fortifications of the place were en- tirely demolished. Edward once more made advances towards negotiating a truce with the Scottish king ; but Robert, who well knew the importance of following up the successful career which had opened upon him, refused to accede to his proposals, and a^ain invaded England. In this incursion the Scottish army ravaged and plundered the county of Northumberland and bishopric of Durham. The towns of lle.vham and Corbridge, and great part of the city of Durham were burnt The army in returning, were bold enough, by a forced march, to attempt the surprisal of Berwick, where the English king then lay ; but their design being discovered they were obliged to retire. So great was the terror which these predatory and destructive visitations inspired in the districts exposed to them, that the inhabi- tants of the county of Durham, and afterwards those of Northumberland, Cum- berland, and Westmoreland, contributed each a sum of two thousand pounds to ROBERT BRUCE. 367 purchase an immunity from the like spoliations in future. In the same year the king assaulted and took the castles of Butel, Dumfries, and Dalswinton. The strong and important fortress of Roxburgh, also, at this time fell into his hands, by the stratagem and bravery of Sir James Douglas. All of these places, so soon as taken, were, by the king's orders destroyed, that they might on no future oc- casion, if retaken, become serviceable to the enemy. The surprisal of Edinburgh castle by Randolph, the king's nephew, ought not, among the stirring events of this time, to be passed over. That brave knight, \vlio from the moment of his accession to the royal cause, had devotedly and suc- cessfully employed himself towards its establishment, had for some time laid siege to, and strictly blockaded the castle ; but the place being one of great natural strength, strongly fortified, and well stored with men and provisions, there seemed little hope of bringing it to a speedy surrender. The garrison were also completely upon the alert Having had reason to suspect the fidelity of Leland their governor, they had put him under confinement, and elected another com- mander in his stead. Matters stood thus, when a singular disclosure made to Randolph by a man named William Frank, suggested the possibility of taking the almost impregnable fortress by escalade. This man, in his youth, had re- sided in the castle as one of the garrison ; and having an amorous intrigue in the city, he had been in use to descend the wall in the night, by means of a rope-ladder, and through a steep and intricate path to arrive at the foot of the rock. By the same precipitous road he had always been enabled to regain the castle without discovery ; and so familiar had all its windings become to him, that he confidently engaged to guide a party of the besiegers by the same track to the bottom of the walls. Randolph resolved to undertake the enterprise. Having provided a ladder suited to the purpose, he, with thirty chosen men, put himself under the guidance of Frank, who, towards the middle of a dark night, safely conducted the party to the bottom of the precipitous ascent Having clambered with great difficulty and exertion about half way up the rock, the ad- venturous party reached a broad projection or shelf, on which they rested some little time to recover breath. While in this position, they heard above them the guard or check-watch of the garrison making their rounds, and could distinguish that they paused a little on that part of the ramparts immediately over them. One of the watch throwing a stone from the wall cried out, " Away, I see you well" The stone flew over the heads of the ambuscading party, who happily remained unmoved, as they really were unseen on the comparatively safe part of the rock which they had attained. The guard hearing no stir to follow, passed on. Randolph and his men having waited till they had gone to a distance again got up. and at the imminent peril of their lives, fairly succeeded in clambering up the remaining part of the rock to the foot of the wall, to which they affixed their ladder. Frank, the guide, was first to mount the walls ; Sir Andrew Gray was the next ; Randolph himself was the third. Before the whole could reach the summit of the wall, the alarm was given, and the garrison rushed to arms. A fierce encounter took place ; but the governor having been slain, the English surrendered themselves to mercy. The fortifications of the castle were disman, tied ; and Leland, the former governor, having been released from his coniine- ment, entered the Scottish service. The earl of Athole, who had long adhered to the English faction, and had recently obtained as a reward for his fidelity a grant of lands in England, now ioined the rising fortunes of his lawful sovereign. Through the mediation of France conferences for a truce were renewed ; but notwithstanding of t Robert invaded Cumberland, wasting the country to a great extent, brians earnestly besought succour from Edward : but that prince being about to 3G8 ROBERT BRUCE. depart for France, did nothing but extol their fidelity, desiring them to defend themselves until his return. By invading Comberiand at this time, Bruce pro- bably intended to draw the attention of the English i'rom the more serious d which he contemplated of making a descent upon the isle of Man. He had scarcely, therefore, returned from his predatory expedition into England, than, embarking his forces, he landed unexpectedly upon that island, overthrew the governor, took the castle of Kuifin, and possessed himself of the country. The Alanx governor on this occasion, is, with great probability, conjectured to have been the same (iallovidian chieftain, who defeated, and made prisoners at Loch- ryan, the two brothers of the Scottish king. On his return from France, Edward was met by commissioners sent to him by such Scots as still remained faithful in their allegiance to England. These made bitter complaint of the miserable condition to which they had been reduced, both from the increasing power of Bruce, and from the oppression which they suffered under the government of the English ministers. Edward, deserted and despised by his nobility, who, at this time, not only refused to attend his army, but even to assemble in parliament upon his summons, could merely make answer to those complaints by promises, which he was alike incapable in himself and in his means to perform. Meanwhile the anus of the patriots continued to prosper. Edward Bruce took and destroyed the castle of Rutherglen, and the town and cast!,; of Dundee. He next laid siege to the castle of Stirling, then held by Philip de Moubray, an English commander of bravery and reputation ; but was here less successful Unable, by any mode of attack known in those days, to make im- pression on a fortress of so great strength, Edward consented to a treaty with the governor that the place should be surrendered, if not succoured by the king of England before St John's day in the ensuing midsummer. Bruce was much displeased with his brother for having granted such a truce, yet he consented to ratify it. The space of time agreed upon allowed ample leisure to the English king to collect his forces for the relief of the castle, the almost only remaining stronghold which he now possessed in Scotland ; and Robert felt that he must either oppose him in battle with a greatly inferior force, or, by retreating in such circumstances, lessen the great fame and advantages which he had acquired. The English king having effected a temporary reconciliation with his refrac- tory nobility, lost no time in making all the preparations which his great power and resources allowed of, to relieve the castle of Stirling, in the first place, arid recover the almost entirely revolted kingdom to his authority. I le summoned the whole power of the English barons to meet him in arms at Berwick on the 1 Ith of June ; invited to his aid Eth O'Connor, chief of the native Irish of Con- naught, and twenty-six other Irish chieftains ; summoned his English subjects in Ireland to .attend his standard, and put both them and the Irish auxiliaries under the command of the earl of Ulster. " So vast," says Barbour, " was the army which was now collected, that nothing nearly so numerous had ever before been arrayed by England, and no force that Scotland could produce might possibly have been able to withstand it in the open field." A considerable number of ships were also ordered for the invasion of Scotland by sea, and for transporting provisions and warlike stores for the use of the army. The Scottish king, meanwhile, used every effort in his power to provide ade- quately against the approaching contest, resolved resolutely to defend the honour and independence of the crown and kingdom which through so many dangers and difficulties he had achieved. He appointed a general rendezvous of his forces at the Torwood, between Falkirk and Stirling. The fighting men assem- bled in consequence of his summons, somewhat exceeded thirty thousand in num- ROBERT BRUCE. 369 ber, besides about fifteen thousand unarmed and undisciplined followers of the camp, according to the mode in those times. Two days before the battle, Brace took up his position in a field not far from Stirling, then known by the name of New Park, whir.li had the castle on the left, and the brook of Bannock on the right. The banks of the rivulet were steep and rugged, and the ground between it and Stirling, being part of a park or chase, was partly open, and partly broken by copse-wood and marshy ground. The place was naturally well adapted for opposing and embarrassing the opera- tions of cavalry ; and to strengthen it yet more, those places whereby horsemen might have access, were covered with concealed pit-falls, so numerous and close together, thjit according to our ancient authority, their construction might be likened to a honey-comb. They were a foot in width, and between two and three feet deep, many rows being placed, one behind the other, the whole being slightly covered with sods and brushwood, so as not to be obvious to an impetuous enemy. The king divided his regular forces into four divisions. Three of these occupied the intended line of battle, from the brook of Bannock, which covered his right flank, to the village of St Ninians, where their left must have remained somewhat exposed to the garrison of Stirling in their rear ; Bruce, perhaps, trusting in this disposition some little to the honour of Moubray, who by the terms of the treaty was precluded from making any attack, but probably more to his real inability of giving any effectual annoyance. Edward Bruce commanded the light wing of these three divisions, which was strengthened by a strong body of cavalry under Keith, the mareschal of Scotland, to whom was committed the charge of attacking the English archers ; Sir James Douglas, and the young Stewart of Scotland, led the central division ; and Thomas Randolph, now earl of Moray, the left. The king himself commanded the fourth or reserve division, composed of the men of Argyle, the islanders, and his own vassals of Carrick. The unarmed followers of the camp, amounting, as we have said, to about fifteen thousnnd, were placed in a valley at some distance in the rear, separated from the field by an eminence, since denominated, it is supposed, from this circum- stance, the Gillies' (that is, the servants') hill. These dispositions were made upon the 2'2d of June, 1314; and next day, being Sunday, the alarm reached the Scottish camp of the approach of the enemy. Sir James Douglas and the mareschal were despatched with a body of cavalry to reconnoitre the English army, then in full march from Falkirk towards Stirling. They soon returned, and, in private, informed the king of the formidable state of the enemy ; but gave out publicly, that the English, though indeed a numerous host, seemed ill commanded and disorderly. The hurried mSrch of Edward into Scotland might give some colour of truth to this information ; but no sight, we are told by the ancient au- thors, could in reality be more glorious and animating than the advance of that great army, in which were concentrated the whole available chivalry, and all the martial pomp, which the power and riches of the English monarch could com- mand. Robert was particularly anxious that no succours from the English army si be allowed, previous to the engagement, to reach the garrison in Stirling castle, and enjoined Randolph, who commanded the left wing of his army, to be vigi lant in repelling any attempt which might be made for that purpose, caution was not unsuccessful ; for, as the English forces drew near, a body o eight hundred horsemen were detached under the command of Clifford, w making a circuit bv the low grounds to the east and north of attempted by that means to pass the front of the Scottish army, and approach castle. They were perceived by the king, who, coming hastily up to Randolph angrily exclaimed, " Thoughtless man ! you have suffered the enemy t i. 3 A 370 ROBERT BRUCE. where you were set to keep the way. A rose has fallen from your chaplet" On receiving 1 this sharp reproof, Randolph instantly made haste, at the head of a body of five hundred spearmen, to redeem his negligence, or perish in the at- tempt The English cavalry, perceiving his advance, wheeled round to attack him. Randolph drew up his small body of men into a compact form, present- ing a front of spears extending outwards on all sides, and with steady resolution awaited the charge of the enemy. In this porcupine-like form were they as- sailed on every side by the greatly superior force of Clifford's cavalry, but with- out effect At the first onset a considerable number of the English were un- horsed, and Sir William Daynecourt, an officer of rank, was slain. Environed, however, as he was, there seemed no chance by which Randolph and his despe- rate band might escape speedy destruction. Douglas, who witnessed with deep interest the jeopardy of his friend, requested permission of the king to go and succour him. " You shall not move from your ground," said Robert ; "let Ran- dolph extricate himself as he best may. I will not for him break purpose." " In truth," replied Douglas, after a pause, " I cannot stand by and see Randolph perish; and, with your leave, I must aid him." The king unwillingly consented, and Douglas hastened to the assistance of his friend. The generous support of the good knight was not required ; for, he had not advanced far \vhen he perceived the English to waver, and fall into confusion. Ordering his followers to halt, '' those brave men,'' said he, " have repulsed the enemy ; let us not diminish their glory by sharing it" The assailants had indeed begun to flag in their fruitless efforts ; when Randolph, who watched well his opportunity, ordering, in his turn, a sudden and furious charge among them, put the whole body to flight with greet slaughter, sustaining on his own side a loss so small as to seem almost incredible. While this spirited combat was yet being maintained in one part of the field, another, of a still more extraordinary and striking character, was destined to arrest the attention of both armies. The English army, whivh had slowly advanced in or- der of battle towards the Scottish position, had at length, before evening, approached so near, that the two opposing van-guards came distinctly into view of each other. Robert was then riding leisurely along the front of the Scottish line, meanly mounted on a small palfrey, having a battle axe in his hand, and distinguished from his knights by a circlet or crown of gold over his helmet, as was the man- ner in those days. Henry de Bohun, an English knight, completely armed, chanced to ride somewhat in advance of his companions, when recognising the Scottish king alone, ard at such disadvantage, he rode furiously towards him with his spear couched, trusting surely to have utftiorsed or slain him on the spot Robert calmly awaited the encounter, avoided agily the spear of his adversary, and next instant raising himself in the stirrups, struck Bohun, as he passed, to the earth, with a blow of his battle axe, so powerfully dealt as to cleave the steel helmet of the knight, and break the handle of the axe into two. The Scots much animated by this exploit of their leader, advanced with a great shout upon the vanguard of the English, who immediately fell back in some confusion upon their main body, leaving a few of their number slain upon the field. When the Scottish army had again recovered order, some of the king's principal men gathering about him, kindly rebuked Robert for his imprudence. The king, conscious of the justice of their remarks, said nothing, but that he was sorry for the loss of his good battle axe. These two incidents falling out so opportunely upon the eve of battle, strengthened the confidence, and greatly animated the courage of the patriot army ; while, in a like degree, they abashed and dispirited the proud host of the enemy. On Monday the 24th of June, at break of day, the two armies mustered in ROBERT BRUCE. 371 order of battle. The van of the English, consisting of archers and lancemen, was commanded by the earl of Gloucester, nephew of king Edward, and the earl of Hereford, constable of England. The main body, comprising nine great divisions, was led on by the king in person, attended by the earl of Pem- broke and Sir Giles d'Argentine, a knight of Rhodes, and a chosen body of five hundred well-armed horse, as his body guards. The nature of the ground did not permit the extension of this vast force, the van division alcne occupying the whole front of battle, so that to the Scots they appeared as composing one great compact column of men. The Scots drew up in the order which we have already described. Maurice, abbot of Inchaffrey, placing himself on an eminence in view of the whole Scottish army, celebrated high mass, the most impos- ing ceremony of the catholic worship, and which was then believed of efficacy to absolve all faithful and penitent assistants from the burthen of their past sins. Then passing along the line barefooted, and bearing a crucifix in his hand, he exhorted the Scots in few and forcible words to combat for their rights and their liberty; upon which the whole army knelt down and received his benediction. When king Edward observed the small rnd unpretending array of his hardy ene- mies, he seemed surprised, and turning himself to Sir Ingram Umfraville, ex- claimed, " What ! will yon Scotsmen fight?" " Yea, sickerly," replied the knight ; who even went the length of advising the king, that instead of making an open attack under so great disadvantages of position, he should feign a re- treat, pledging himself, from his own experience, that by such means only could he break the firm array of the Scots, and overwhelm them. The king disdained this counsel ; and chancing then to observe the whole body of the Scots kneel themselves to the ground " See," said he, " yon folk kneel to ask mercy." " You say truly," Sir Ingram replied, " they ask mercy, but it is not of you, but of God. Yon men will win the field or die.'' " Be it so, then !" said the king, and immediately gave order to sound the charge. The signal of attack being given, the van of the English galloped on to charge the right wing of the Scots, commanded by Edward, the king's brother, and were received with intrepid firmness. The advance of this body allowed part of the main body of the English to come up, who moving obliquely to the rioht of their own van, were soon engaged with the centre and left flank of the Scottish army. The conflict, thus, soon became general along the whole Scottish line, and the slaughter considerable on both sides. Repeated and desperate attempts were made by the English cavalry to break the firm, or as they seemed immov- able, phalanxes of the enemy, but with no effect. Straitened and harassed by the nature of the ground, they with difficulty maintained order ; and but that they were pressed on by the mass in their rear, the front lines of the English would have been inevitably repulsed. The king of Scots perceiving that his troops were grievously annoyed by the English archers, detached a small chosen band of cavalry under Sir Robert Keith, who, making a circuit by tl riht extremity of the Scottish line, fell furiously upon the unprotected archers flank, and put them to flight. This body of men, whose importance in an E lish army has been so often and so fatally exemplified, botli before and since, were so effectually discomfited, as to be of no after use in the battle, and by th precipitate retreat were instrumental in spreading confusion and alarm throu fhe whole army. Robert with the body of reserve under his ******* joined battle ; and though the fury on both sides was not relaxed, the 1, the English were every moment falling more and more into disorder, in this critical state, when a singular accident or device, for it never has been as tamed which, turned decisively the fortune of the day. We have before ed, that the ScotUsh camp was attended by a large body of disorderly lollowers. 372 ROBERT BRUCE. amounting to about fifteen thousand in number ; and that these, along with tho camp baggage, were stationed by Bruce to the rear of a little eminence called Gillies' hill. These men, either instructed for the purpose, or, what seems more likely, perceiving from their position that the English army began to give way, resolved with what weapons chance afforded them, to fall down into the rear of iheir countrymen, that by so doing they might share in the honour of the action, and the plunder of the victory. Choosing leaders, therefore, among themselves, they drew up into a sort of martial order, some mounted on the baggage horsed and others on foot, having sheets fastened upon tent-poles and spears, instead of banners. The sudden and appalling spectacle of what seemed to the English in the distance, to be a new and formidable army, completed the confusion and consternation which had already begun widely to invade their ranks. The Scots felt their advantage; and raising a great shout, in which they were joined heartily by the auxiliaries in their rear, they pressed forward on the ground of their enemies with a fury which became more and more irresistible. Disci- pline and union were soon entirely lost, and the rout, on every side, became general and disastrous. Pembroke, when he saw that the day was lost, seized Edward's horse by the bridle, and constrained him, though not without difficulty, to leave the h'eld. When Sir Giles d' Argentine, the brave knight of Khodes, was informed of the king's flight, and pressed to accompany him; " It never was my wont to fly," said he, and putting spurs to his horse, lid the king, " for you ought to have remembered that the van always should pro- tect the rear." King Robert, after the retreat of his brother's force upon Carrickfergus, was necessitated, from the urgency of his own affairs, to return to Scotland. We may, in order to have no occasion to revert to the subject afterwards, state briefly in this place, the catastrophe which, in the following year, closed the career of Scottish sovereignty in Ireland. For some time the gallant but rash Edward maintained a precarious authority in Ulster. In the month of October, 1318, he lay encamped at Fagher, near Dundalk, with an army amounting to about two thousand men, exclusive of the native Irish, who, though numerous, were not much to be depended on. The Anglo-Irish approached his position under the command of Lord John Bermingham. Their force was strong in cavalry, and out-numbered the Scots by nearly ten to one. Contrary to the counsel of all his officers, Edward engaged with the enemy ; and was slain almost at the first onset ; an event which was speedily followed up by the total discom- fiture of his army. John Maupas, by whose hand Edward fell, was found, after the battle, stretched dead over the body of the prince. Edward of England, like all kings who are weak and obstinate, could also, when he dared, be wicked. Affecting to consider the gallant enemy who now had fallen, in the light of a traitor or rebellious subject, the corpse was subjected to the ignominies conse- quent upon the punishment of such ; being quartered and exposed to view in four different quarters of the island. The head was carried over to England, and presented to Edward by Bermingham himself; who obtained the dignity of Earl of Lowth for his services. During the absence of king Robert in Ireland, the English made various attempts to disturb the tranquillity of Scotland, which all, happily, proved abor- tive. The Earl of Arundel, with a numerous force, invaded the forest of , burgh ; but falling into an ambush prepared for him by Douglas, he was d< ed. Edmund de Cailand, the governor of Berwick, having made an inroad in Teviotdale, was attacked by the same victorious commander, and himself and many of his followers slain. The same fate befell Robert Neville a knight, then ROBERT BRUCE. resident at Berwick, who had boastingly declared that he would encounter Dou- glas, so soon as he dared display his banner in that neighbourhood. The Eng- lish also invaded Scotland with a considerable force by sea, coming to anchor oft* the town of Inverkeithing in the Firth of Forth. The panic caused by the unexpected appearance of this armament was great; and only fire hundred men under the command of the Earl of Fife, and sheriff of the county, were mustered to oppose their landing. When the English, with somewhat of the revived intre- pidity of their nation, proceeded boldly to shore, so much terror did they inspire, that, without any attempt at hindrance, the force drawn up agr.inst them hastily retreated towards the interior. They had scarcely, however, thus committed themselves, when they were met by William Sinclair, bishop of Dnnkeld, at the head of a body of sixty horse advancing, in all haste, to assist in repelling the invaders. " Whither in such haste?" said he, to the disordered rout, " you de- serve to have your gilt spurs hacked off." Putting himself then at the head of the little troop, casting aside his bishop's vestment, and seizing a spear, the bold ecclesiastic continued "Who loves his king, or his country, turn with me." '1 he unexpectedness and spirit of this challenge redeemed the honour and the courage of all who heard it. The English, who had not yet completed their landing, were in turn seized with the panic they themselves had communicated ; and were driven to their ships with great loss. Five hundred, it is asserted, were killed upon the strand, and many drowned by the swamping of an over- loaded boat When king Robert was informed of the particulars of this gallant exploit, he said, "Sinclair shall always after be my own bishop;'' and long after was the prelate honourably remembered by his countrymen by the appellation of the king's bishop. Baffled in these attempts, and under serious apprehensions for tne safety of Ber- wick and his own borders, the English king contrived, about this time, to employ in his favour the spiritual weapons of the church of Rome. John XXII, the then pope, was easily induced to hearken to his representations; and a bull was issued com- manding a truce for two years between the two hostile kingdoms, under pain of excommunication. Two cardinals, privately instructed to denounce the pontifi- cal censures, should they see fit, upon Bruce and " whomsoever else,'' were despatched to make known these commands to the two kings. The ordinals arrived in England, and in prosecution of their errand they sent two messengers, the bishop of Corbeil and Master Aumery, into Scotland with the letters and instructions intended for the Scottish king. Robert listened to the message de- livered by these nuncios with attention, ai d heard read the open letters from the Pope ; but when those sealed and addressed ' Robert Bruce, govern* r of Scotland,' were produced, he firmly declined receiving them. " Among my barons." said he, " there are many of the name of Robert Bruce, who share in the government ol Scotland. These letters may possibly be addressed to one of them ; but they are not addressed to me, who am king of Scotland.'' The messengers attempted to apologise for this omission, by saying, that " the holy church was not wont, dur- ing the dependence of a controversy, to say or do aught which might prejudice the claims of either contending party.'' "Since then," replied the king, " my spiritual father and my holy mother would not prejudice the cause of my adver- sary by bestowing on me the title of king during the dependence of the contro- versy, they ought not to have prejudiced my cause by withdrawing that title from me. It seems that my parents are partial to tlieir English son. Had you," added he, with resolute but calm dignity, " presumed to present letters with such an address to any other sovereign prince, you might, perhaps, have been answer ed more harshly ; but I reverence you as the messengers of the holy see.'' Ir ROBERT BRUCE. 377 consequence of the failure of this negotiation, the cardinals resolved to proceed with their further instructions, and proclaim the papal truce in Scotland. In an enterprise so hazardous the Roman legates were at some loss how to pro- ceed ; but at length they fell upon a devoted monk of the name of Adam New- ton, who was willing to risk himself in the service. Newton being fully charged with his commission, and intrusted with letters to some of the Scottish clergy, proceeded forthwith upon his journey. He found the Scottish king encamped with his army in a wood near Old Cambus, busily engaged in making prepara- tions for the assault of Berwick. He was denied admission to the presence, but ordered, at the same time, to deliver what letters or messages he might have to the king's seneschal or clerk. These were quickly returned to him, unopened, witli the brief verbal answer, " I will listen to no bulls until I am treated as king of Scotland, and have made myself master of Berwick.'' The poor monk, environed, as he himself expresses it, with danger, and troubled how to preserve his papers and his own mortal life, earnestly entreated that he might have a safe conduct granted him to pass further into Scotland, or at least that he might re- turn without peril to Berwick ; but both requests were denied him, and lie was ordered to leave the country without delay. On his road to Berwick, he was encountered by four armed ruffians, who stripped him of all his papers and effects, and even of the greater part of 1 is clothes. Thus ended this memorable transaction with the papal court, in a manner very unusual for that age ; but the weakness and injustice of Edward, and the injustice and servility of Rome were so obvious in it, that Robert secure, otherwise, in the affections of his subjects, both clerical and laical, could safely deride and defy the effects of both. While Robert, for some reason or other which has not been explained, had given over the preparations he had been engaged in for the siege of Berwick, the treachery of one of the inhabitants, of the name of Spalding, who had been harshly treated by the governor, occurred, to render the attainment of his object more easy and sure, than otherwise, in all likelihood, it would have proved. Tli is person wrote a letter to the Earl of March, to whom he was distantly con- nected by marriage, in which he offered to betray, on a certain night, that post on the wall where he kept guard. The nobleman, not daring of himself to en- gage in such an enterprise, communicated the intelligence to the king. " You have done well," said'Robert, " in making me your confidant: for, if you had told this to either Randolph or Douglas, you would have offended the one whom you did not trust You shall now, however, have the aid of both.'' By the king's directions, the Earl of March assembled his troops at a certain place, where, on an appointed day and hour, he was joined by the forces of Randolph and Douglas. Thus cautiously assembled, the army by a night march approach- ed the town. Having reached the appointed part of the walls, near to that place still known by the name of the Cowport, they, with the assistance of Spalding, scaled the walls, and were, in a few hours, masters of the town. The castle, after a brief siege, in which the king assisted in person, was forced to surren- der. Scotland, by this event, was at length wholly regained to its ancient sove- reignty ; and, though the place was in an after reign retaken by the English, so pertinaciously was the old right to it maintained at the union of the two king- doms, that, as a compromise of the difference, it was legislatively allowed to be- long to neither kingdom, and it still forms a distinct and independent portion of the British dominions. The Scottish army, after the reduction of Berwick, invaded England by North- umberland; took by siege the castles of Werk and Harbolth, and that of ford by surprise. These events occurred in the spring of 1318. In Maycl the same year, the Scots penetrated into Yorkshire, and in their devastating pro 378 ROBERT BRUCE. cress burned the towns of Northallerton, Boroughbridge, Scarborough, .and Skipton ; returning home loaded with spoil, and, says an English author, " driv- ing their prisoners before them like flocks of sheep." Bruce was, at this time, solemnly excommunicated by the pope's legate in England ; but so little was this sentence regarded, that, in a parliament which was assembled at Scone, the whole clergy and laity of the kingdom renewed their allegiance to the king ; and by a memorable mode of expression, by which, doubtless, they meant to include the pope, as well as the king of England, solemnly engaged, to protect the rights and liberties of Scotland against all mortals, however eminent they may be in power, atithority, and dignity. Edward of England, having effected a temporary reconciliation of the discor- dant factions of his kingdom, was enabled, in the succeeding year, to collect a considerable army for the purpose of retaking the town and citadel of Berwick. The place had been left by Robert under the command of the Stewart, with a strong garrison, and was plentifully stored with provisions. To prevent the ap- proach of succours to the place, the English drew lines of countervallation round it ; and confident in their numbers, commenced a general and vigorous assault. After a long and desperate contest they were repulsed. They next made their attacks more systematically on various places, and often simultaneously, aided by engines and contrivances which are curiously and minutely described by ancient historians ; but these attempts admirably conducted as they were, according to the engineering science of that day, seconded by the bravery of the assailants, proved abortive. One of those engines used by the English upon this occasion, was called a sow. As nearly as can be ascertained, it was a huge fabric, reaching in height above the top of the wall, and composed of beams of timber, well roofed, having sUiges within it. It moved upon wheels, and was calculated for the double pur- pose of conducting miners to the foot of the wall, and armed men for scaling it. To oppose this and other such machines, the Scots, under the direction of one John Crab a Fleming, had provided themselves with movable engines called cranes, similar to the catapultae of the ancients, capable of throwing large stones with great projectile force. As the sow advanced, however, great fears were entertained by the besieged. The engineer, by whom the monstrous piece of work had been constructed, had, meantime, become a prisoner in the hands of the Scots ; who, actuated by a very unjust revenge upon the man's unlucky in- genuity, and upon their own fears, brought him to that part of the wall against which the engine was directed, threatening with instant death any remissness he should show in his efforts towards its destruction. The engineer caused one of the cranes formerly mentioned to be placed directly opposite to the approaching machine of the enemy, and prepared to work it with all his art. The first stone, launched with prodigious force, flew beyond the object at which it was directed ; the second, aimed with an opposite incorrectness, fell within the mark. There was time only for a third trial, upon the success of which all seemed to depend ; for the English, aware that their safety lay in getting under or within the range of ihe catapult, strained every nerve to advance, and were now within very little of accomplishing their purpose. The third great stone passed in an oblique and nearly perpendicular line, high into the air, making a loud whizzing noise as it rose, and whether owing to chance or art, it was so happily directed, as to fall with a dreadful crash upon the devoted machine now so nearly within reach of its destination. The terrified men within, instantly rushed from beneath their cover ; and the besieged upon the walls, raising a loud shout, called out to them, " that their great sow had farrowed her pigs." Grappling irons were quickly fastened upon the shattered apparatus, and it was set on fire. While all this was transacting upon the land side of Berwick, its reduced and worn out garrison ROBERT BRUCE. 379 had to sustain an assault, no less desperate, on that part towards the river or es- tuary ; where, by means of vessels of a peculiar construction, having falling bridges mid-mast high, by which to reach the top of the walls, the city was vig- orously, and almost successfully stormed. These, and various other desperate attempts, seemed in no way to exhaust the ai-dour of the besiegers ; and they did not lessen, though they tempered, the confidence of the besieged. King Robert, unable from the strength and fortified position of the English army, to render any direct assistance to the beleagured garrison, at the same time saw, that if the Stewart were not shortly relieved he must be brought to a speedy surrender. In this emergency he resolved, by a destructive invasion of England, to make a diversion in his favour, and, if possible, draw off the forces of Edward from the siege. This expedition was committed to the charge of Randolph and Douglas, who, entering England by the western marches, pene- trated -into Yorkshire. It is asserted, that they entertained some scheme of carrying off the wife of Edward from her residence near York. Disappointed in this, they wasted that rich province, far and near, with fire and sword. The archbishop hastily collected a numerous but ill-assorted army, great part of which is said to have been composed of ecclesiastics, and placing himself at their head, determined to check the progress of the invading enemy. The Scots then lay encamped at Milton, near Boroughbridge, in the north riding of Yorkshire. The English, on coming up with that hardy, disciplined, and successful army, were charged with so great rapidity and fury, that, scarcely waiting to strike a blow, they gave way in the utmost disorder, and three thousand are reported to have been slain in the rout. From the great numbers of churchmen who fell in this battle, it came, from a soit of humour of the times, to be popularly distin- guished by the name of the Chapter of Milton. The effects which Robert expected from this invasion of England were not miscalculated. The news of the devastations and successes of the Scots no sooner reached Berwick, than they caused concern in all, and much diversity of opinion amond, of the loss of lives, the perdition of souls, and all the other miserable consequences \\liich may ensue from war between the two contending nations." The pope, however much he may have been incensed at the boldness of tins address, appeal's also to have been alarmed. In a bull which he shortly afterwards sent to Edward, he strongly recommends pacific measures, and bestows upon Bruce the ambiguous title of " Regent of the kingdom of Scotland." The parliament which distinguished itself by this spirited and honourable measure was, in the course of its sitting, engaged in one of a more unpleasing character. This was the investigation of a conspiracy in which some of the highest men in the kingdom were implicated. The affair is now, from the loss of records, but indistinctly understood. After a trial of the conspirators, Soulis, and the countess of Strathern were condemned to perpetual imprisonment Gil- bert de 31alerb, and John de Logic, both knights, and Richard Brown, an esquire, were found guilty of treason and suffered accordingly. Roger de Mou- bray died before sentence ; yet, according to a practice long retained in Scottish law in cases of treason, judgment was pronounced upon the dead body. The king, however, was pleased to mitigate this rigour, and he was allowed the hon- ours of sepulture. The fate of David de Brechin, the king's nephew, who suf- fered on this occasion, excited universal and deep compassion. His crime alone lay in the concealing of the treason, which was communicated to him under an oatli of secrecy. He had neither approved of, nor participated in it ; yet not- withstanding these alleviations, and his near relationship to the king, he was made an example of rigorous, though impartial justice. This parliament was, in reference to this transaction, long remembered popularly under the appellation of the black parliament. During the inactive period of the truce, various methods were used towards ef- fecting a peace between England and Scotland, but without effect. The pope as well as the French king offered their services for this purpose ; but the exulta- tion in which Edward then was, from having successfully crushed the Lancasterian faction which had so long disturbed his personal peace and government, per- mitted him not to give ear to any moderate counsels whatever. " dive yourself," says he to the pope, " no further solicitude about a truce with the Scots. The exigencies of my artairs inclined me formerly to listen to such proposals ; but now I am resolved to establish peace by force of arms." While he was engaged in these preparations, the Scots penetrated by the western marches into Lanca- shire, committing their wonted devastations, and returned home loaded with spoil. The king of Scots, who, at this time found no occasion for a general en- gagement with his greatly superior enemy, fell upon a simple and effectual expe- dient to render such an event unlikely, if not impossible. All the cattle ami provisions of the Merse, Tiviotdale, and the Lothians, he ordered to be removed into inaccessible or secure places ; an order which was so exactly executed, that according to tradition, the only prey which fell into the hands of the English was one solitary bull atTranent, which, from lameness, had been unable to travel along with the other cattle. " Is that all ye have got ?" said the earl Warenne to the spoilers as they returned to the camp ; " I never saw so dear a beast" Ed ward advanced without opposition to the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, where having in vain waited for some time for supplies from his fleet, he was necessi- tnted, from absolute famine, to retire. In their countermarch into England, the soldiers committed whatever outrages were possible in so desolate a rout. Theii license even got the better of their superstition. Monks, who believed that the ROBERT BRUCE. 381 sanctity of their character would have protected them, were wantonly murdered, and their monasteries and abbeys plundered and burned. When this unfortunate army got once more into the peace and plenty of their own country, it was little better with them ; for, in proportion as their privations had been extreme, so, now, were their indulgences excessive ; and an English historian has left it on record, that almost one half of the great army which Edward had led into Scot- land, was destroyed either by hunger or intemperance. The remains of the English army had scarcely once more been restored to order, when the Scots, who had followed closely upon their rear, entered Eng- land, and laid siege to the castle of Norham. Edward, himself, then lay at the abbey of Biland in Yorkshire ; the main body of his troops being encamped in a strong position in the neighbourhood, supposed to be accessible only by one narrow pass. The Scots, commanded by Robert in person, suddenly raising the siege, marched onward in the hope of finding the English unprepared, or, as some say, of seizing the person of Edward, by the aid of some of that monarch's treacherous attendants. This latter design, if at all entertained, which is not improbable, must have been found of too difficult execution. Douglas resolved to force the defile within which the English had entrenched themselves ; and Randolph, leaving his own peculiar command in the army, determined to join his friend in the enterprise. The attack and defence continued obstinate and bloody on both sides, but, in every likelihood, the men of Douglas must have been obliged to retire, had not an unexpected aid come to their relief. The king of Scots, who commanded the main and inactive body of his army on the plain, had soon perceived the difficulty, if not impracticability of the adventure in which his two brave generals had engaged themselves. With the same bold and accurate forecast, which on some other occasions marked his generalship, he fell upon the only, because in a great measure well-timed, means of extrication and success which his situation afforded. Between the two armies lay a long craggy hill of very difficult access, except through the narrow pass of which we have made mention, and which the body of men under Douglas were vainly en- deavouring to force. A party of Highlanders from Argyle and tlie Isles, admi- rably suited for the service, were ordered, at some little distance, to scale the eminences and so gain command of the pass from the ground above, where they might, with signal effect, annoy the English underneath, and in flank. The manoeuvre was successfully executed, the pass carried, and the whole English army shortly after put to complete rout. They were pursued by the Stewart at the head of five hundred men, to the gates of York. Edward, himself, escaped to the same place with the greatest difficulty, abandoning all his baggage and trea- sure to the enemy, leaving behind him even the privy seal of his kingdom. This was the last battle in which this undeserving and equally unfortunate prince en- gaged the Scots ; and it may be curious to remark how, in its result, it bore some resemblance to the disaster and shame of the first. The Scots, after committ in- extensive devastations on the unprotected and dispirited country, returned home, carryiii"- a lon->- with them many prisoners, and an immense booty. From this period to the accession of Edward III. to the throne of England in 1327, there occurred little which can properly come within our province to re- late. A truce for fifteen years was with much willingness Receded to by tl English king, who could never, however, be induced to rehnqmsh his claim of sovereignty over Scotland. The pope was much pressed, particularly in an em- bassy conducted by Randolph, to permit the reconciliation of Robert with church; but the king of Scots, as yet, possessed too little interest in that venal court and the king of England too much, to allow of such a concession. The pontiff however, showed all the favour he could possibly, consistent with such a 382 ROBERT BRUCE. denial ; and though pressed by Edward, under various pretences, to renew the publication of his former censures, could by no means be induced to comply. The king of France was more honourable and just, though, probably at the same time, politic, and concluded, in 1326, a treaty of alliance, offensive and defen- sive, with Scotland. On the accession of Edward III., hostilities almost immediately re-commenced between the two kingdoms. That these originated on the side of the Scots seems generally allowed ; but the motives which led to them are now only matter of conjecture. One historian assigns as the cause, that the Scots had detected the general bad faith of the English. According to Barbour, the ships of that na- tion had seized upon several Scottish ships bound for the low countries, slain the mariners, and refused to give satisfaction. That the king of Scotland, during the then weak state of the councils of England, had determined to insist upon the full recognition of his title, seems to have been, from the decisiveness of hi.< preparations, the true, or more important, motive of the war. The campaign which followed, though, perhaps, as curious and interesting as any which occurred during these long wars, cannot be entered upon in this place, at length sufficient to render, it instructive ; and it much more properly falls to be described in the lives of those two great generals, Randolph and Douglas, by whom it was con- ducted. The enterprise, on the part of England, was productive of enormous expense to that kingdom ; and it terminated not only without advantage, but without honour. The so long desired peace between the two kingdoms was now near at hand. To, attain this had been the grand and constant aim of all king Robert's policy; and the court of England seemed, at length, persuaded of the immediate neces- sity of a measure, the expediency of which could not but have long appeared ob- vious. A negotiation was therefore entered into, and brought to a happy issue in a parliament held at Northampton in April, 1328. The principal articles were tle recognition of king Robert's titles ; the independent sovereignty of the kingdom ; and the marriage of Johanna, king Edward's sister, to David, the son and heir of the king of Scots. Robert survived not long this consummation of his political life. He had for some time laboured under an inveterate distemper, in those days called a leprosy ; a consequence of the fatigues, hardships, and sufferings which, to such an unpar- alleled degree, he had endured in the early part of his career. It was probably the same disease as that with which he was afflicted prior to the battle of In- verury ; but though, at that lime, the ardour of youth and enterprise, and a na- turally powerful constitution, had triumphed over its malignity, Robert seemed now fully aware that it must prove mortal The two last years of his life were spent in comparative seclusion, in a castle at Cardross, situated on the northern shore of the firth of Clyde ; where, from documents still extant, Robert passed these few peaceful, though embittered days of his life, in a style of munificence every way becoming his high station. Much of his time was devoted to the con- struction of ships ; and whether he himself joined personally in such amuse- ments or not, the expense of aquatic and fishing excursions, hawking, and other sports, appears to have fonned a considerable item of his domestic disbursements. From the same authentic source, it is pleasing to observe, that his charities to the poor were regular and befitting. Robert the First of Scotland died in this retirement, on the 7th day of June, 1329, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and twenty-third year of his reign. Prior to this event a remarkable and affecting scene is recorded to have taken place be- tueen the dying monarch and several of his esteemed counsellors and companions in anus. Having spoke to these, generally, upon matters connected with the ROBERT BRUCE. 383 ordering and well-being of his kingdom, Robert called Sir James Douglas to his couch, and addressed him in somewhat the following manner: "Sir James, my dear and gallant friend, you know well the many troubles and severe hardships I have undergone in recovering and defending the rights of my crown and peo- ple, for you have participated in them all. When I was hardest beset of all, I made a vow, that if I ever overcame my difficulties, I would assume the cross, and devote the remainder of my days to warring against the enemies of our Lord and Saviour. But it has pleased providence, by this heavy malady, to take from me all hope of accomplishing^ivhat, in my heart and soul, I have earnestly desired. Therefore, my dear and faithful companion, knowing no knight more valiant, or better fitted than yourself for such a service, my earnest desire is, that when I am dead, you take my heart with you to Jerusalem, and deposit it in the holy sepulchre, that my soul may be so acquitted from the vow which my body is unable to fulfil." All present shed tears at this discourse. "My gallant and noble king," said Douglas, " I have greatly to thank you for the many and large bounties which you have bestowed upon me ; but chiefly, and above all, I am thankful, that you consider me worthy to be intrusted with this precious charge of your heart, which has ever been full of prowess and goodness ; and I shall most loyally perform this last service, if God grant me life and power." The king tenderly thanked him for his love and fidelity, saying, " I shall now die in peace." Immediately after Robert's decease, his heart was taken out, as he had enjoined, and the body deposited under a rich marble monument, in the choir of the Abbey church of Dunfermline. So died that heroic, and no less patriotic monarch, to whom the people of Scotland, in succeeding ages, have looked back with a degree of national pride and aflection, which it has been the lot of few men in any age or country to in- spire. From a state of profligate degeneracy and lawless barbarity, originating in, and aggravated by, a foreign dominion and oppression, he raised the poor kingdom of Scotlai d to a greater degree of power and security than it had ever before attained ; and by a wise system of laws and regulations, forming, in fact, the constitution of the popular rights and liberties, secured to posterity the be- nefit of all the great blessings which his arms and policy had achieved. BRUCE, ROBERT, an eminent divine of the seventeenth century, a collateral relation of the sovereign who bore the same name, and ancestor at the sixth remove of the illustrious Abyssinian traveller, was born about the year 1551, being the second son of Sir Alexander Bruce of Airth in Stirlingshire, by Janet, daughter of Alexander, fifth Lord Livingston, and Agnes, daughter of the second fclarl of Morton. We -learn from Birrel's Diary, a curious chronicle of the six- teenth century, that Sir Alexander, the father of this pious divine, was c those powerful Scottish barons, who used to be always attended by a retinue of armed servants, and did not scruple, even in the streets of the capital, to attack any equally powerful baron with whom they were at feud, and whom they ra chance to meet, Birrel tells us, for instance, that on " the 24th ot Novel >er, 15G7, at two in the afternoon, the laird of Airth and the laird ot Ueemis cestor of the Earl of Wemyss] mett upon the heigh gait of Edinburghe [I Street], and they and thair followers faught a verey bloudy skirmish, w wes maney hurte on both sydes by shote of pistole." The father of t of this memoir was descended from a cadet of the Bruces of Clackmannan, who, in the reign of James I. of Scotland, had married the eldest daughter . de Airtlie, and succeeded to the inheritance. The Bruces of ( from whom, we believe, all the Bruces of Stirlingshire Clackmannanshire K ross, &c., ( including the Earl of Elgin, ) are descended, sprung rom a younger son of Robert de Bruce, the competitor with Baliol for the Scottish throne, and 384 EGBERT BRUCE. therefore uncle to King Robert, The lender may perhaps remember the pioud saying of the last Lady of Clackmannan, \vlio, on being complimented by Robert Mums as belonging to the family of the Scottish hero, informed the poet, that King Robert belonged to her family : it will be seen from our present statement that the old lady made a slight mistake. While the eldest son of Sir Alexander Bruce was designed to inherit the pio- perty of Airth, a comparatively sm; 11 appanage, consisting of the lands of Kin- naird, was appropriated to Robert ; but to eke out his provision for life, he was devoted, like many other cadets of Scottish families, to the profession of the law. With a view to qualify him for the bar, he was sent to Paris, where he studied the principles of Roman jurisprudence under the most approved masters. After- wards returning to his native country, he completed his studies at Edinburgh, and began to conduct his father's business before the Court of Session. That court was then, like the other parts of government, corrupt and disordered ; the judges were court partisans; and justice was too often dispensed upon the prin- ciples of an auction. Young Bruce, whose mind was already tinctured \\itb an ardent sentiment of religion, shrunk appalled from a course of life which involved such moral enormities, and, without regarding the prospect of speedily becoming a judge, which his father, according to the iniquitous practice of the time, had secured for him by patent ! he determined on devoting himself to the church, which, it must be confessed, at that time opened up fully as inviting prospects to an ambitious mind as the bar. His parents, to \\hom the moral status of a clergyman in those days was as nothing compared with the nominal rank of a judge, combated this resolution by all the means in their power, not excepting the threatened withdrawal of his inheritance. But Bruce, \\lio is said to have felt what he considered a spiritual call towards his new profession, resigned his pi'etensions to the estate without a sigh, and, throwing off the embroidered scarlet dress which he had worn as a courtier, exchanged his resi- dence at Edinburgh for the academical solitude^of St Andrews, \\here he com- menced the study of theology. At this period, Andrew Melville, the divinity professor of St Andrews, was undergoing banishment on account of his opposition to the court ; but being permitted to resume his duties in 153(5, Bruce enjoyed the advantage of his pre- lections for the ensiling winter, and appears to have become deeply imbued with his peculiar spirit. In the summer of 1587, he was brought to Edinburgh by Melville, and recommended to the General Assembly, as a fit successor to the deceased Mr Lawson, who, in his turn, had been the successor of Knox. This -charge, however, Bruce scrupled to undertake, lest he should be found unfit for its important duties ; he would only consent to preach till the next synod, by way of trying his abilities. It appears that he filled the pulpit for some months, though not an ordained clergyman ; which certainly conveys a strange impression of the rules of the church at that period. He was even persuaded, on an emergency, to undertake the task of dispensing the communion which must be acknowledged as a still more remarkable breach of ecclesiastical system. He was soon after called by the unanimous voice of the people to become their pastor ; but partly, perhaps, from a conscientious aversion to ordination, and partly from a respect to his former exertions, he would never submit to any ceremonial, such as is considered necessary by all Christian churches in giving commission to a new member. He judged the call of the people and the appro- bation of the ministry to be sufficient warrant for his undertaking this sacred profession. So rapidly did the reputation of Bruce advance among his brethren, that, in six months after this period, at an extraordinary meeting of the General Assem- ROBERT BRUCE. 385 bly, which was called to consider the means of defence against the Spanish Ar- mada, he was chosen Moderator. A charge was preferred to this court against a preacher named Gibson, who had uttered disrespectful language in his pulpit regarding king James. The accused party was charged to appear, and, failing to do so, was suspended for contumacy. There can be no doubt that the church was most reluctant to proceed to such an extremity with one of its members on a court charge ; and its readiness to do so can only be accounted for as necessi- tated in some measure by the avowed constitution of the church itself, which repeatedly set forth that it did not claim an exemption for its members from ordinary law, but only desired that an impeached individual should first be tried by his brethren. Accordingly we find the conscience of the Moderator imme- diately accusing him in a strange way for having yielded a brother to lay ven- gennce ; for, on that night, he thought he heard a voice saying to him, in the Latin language, ' Why hast thou been present at the condemnation of my ser- vant ?' When the destruction of the Spanish Armada was known in Scotland, Bruce preached two thanksgiving sermons, which were published in 1591, and display a strength of sentiment and language fully sufficient to vindicate the con- temporary reputation of the author to posterity. Master Robert Bruce, 1 as he was styled in compliance with the common fashion of the time, figured conspicuously in the turbulent proceedings which, for some years after this period, characterised the ecclesiastical history of Scotland. By king James he seems to have been regarded with a mixture of respect, jea- lousy, and fear, the result of his powerful abilities, his uncompromising hostility to undue regal power, and the freedom with which he censured the follies and vices of the court. It was by no means in contradiction to these feelings that, when James sailed for Denmark in 1589, to bring home his queen, he raised Master Robert to the Privy Council, and invested him with a non-commissioned power of supervision over the behaviour of the people during his absence ; telling him, at the same time, that he had more confidence in him and the other minis- ters of Edinburgh, than in the whole of his nobles. The king knew well enough that if he did not secure the exertions of the clergy on the side of the govern- ment during his absence, they would certainly act against it. As might have been expected from the influence of the clergy, the usual disorders of the realm ceased entirely during the supremacy of this system of theocracy; and the chief honour of course fell upon Bruce. The turbulent Earl of Bothwell, who was the nominal head of the government, proposed, during James's absence, to make a public repentance for a life of juvenile profligacy. The strange scene, which exhibited the first man in the kingdom humbled for sin before an ordmary Christian congregation, took place on the 9th of November in the High Church On this occasion Bruce preached a sermon from 2 Tim., chap. 11., verses 2; which was printed among others in 1591, and abounds in good sense, and pointed and elegant language. When the sermon was ended, the **A_ of well upon his knees confessed his dissolute and licentH>us Lfe and with tear, his eye's uttered the following words-' 1 wald to God that I ^J** repentance as mine heart craveth ; and I desire you all to pray for it was the repentance of Esau, and soon effaced by greater enomiUei On the return of king James with his queen, m May, 159 the cordial thanks of his Majesty for his zeal ^^^*^ absence, and his care in tutoring the people to behave Recently eft ' * and her Danish attendants. He was also honoured with the duty of pla, ^ have the place of confinement fixed at his family seat ; but James had heard of the effect of his preachings at that place, and returned for answer, ' It is not ROBERT BRUCE. 389 for the love of him that ye have written, but to entertain a schism in the kirk ; we will have no more popish pilgrimages to Kiimaird (in allusion to the frequent intercourse between Bruce and the pious people of the surrounding country); he shall go to Inverness.' The King never forgave his scepticism of the Gowrio conspiracy, although this was the occasion rather than the cause of the persecution which tracked him in his latter years. He remained at Inverness till the death of James in 1625, when he obtained permission once more to reside at his own house. He was even allowed, for some time after this, to preach in several of the parish churches around Edinburgh, whither large crowds flocked to hear him. At length, in 1629, Charles wrote to the Council, requesting that he might again be confined to Kinnaird, or the space of two miles around it. The church of Larbert having been neglected by the bishops, and left in ruins without either minister or stipend, he had repaired it at his own expense, and now finding it within the limits of his confinement, he preached there every Sunday to a nume- rous and eager audience. At one of his sermons, either in that church or in the neighbourhood, he gained a proselyte who vindicated his cause, and that of Pres- byterians in general, a few years after. This was the celebrated Alexander Henderson, minister at Leuchars, in Fife, whom he was the means of converting, by preaching from the first verse of the tenth chapter of St John's Gospel. Bruce had now lived to see the Scottish Presbyterian Church altered for an im- perfect Episcopacy, and as. he prepared for the fate which threescore and ten years Lad long marked out for him, he must have felt convinced that what remained of his favourite system could not long survive him. The revival of the Presbyterian polity, in all its pristine glory, was reserved in its proper time for his pupil Hen- derson. Exhausted with the infirmities of age, he was for some time almost con- fined to his chamber; yet, as he laboured under no active disease, his end advanced slowly. On the 13th of August, 1631, having breakfasted with his family, in the usual manner, he felt death approaching-, and warned his children that his Master called him. With these words, he desired a Bible to be brought, and finding that his sight was gone, he requested his daughter to place his hand on the two last verses of the Epistle to the Romans. These were highly expressive of his life, his resolution, and his hopes. When his hand was fixed on the words, he re- mained for a few moments satisfied and silent. He had only strength to add, Now God be with you, my children ; I have breakfasted with you, and shall sup to-night with the Lord Jesus Christ.' He then closed his eyes, and peacefully expired. Such was the end of the long and various life of Robert Bruce. His bold and comprehensive mind, his stern independence, and stainless integrity, are qualities, which, under every disadvantage, procure the respect of mankind, and indicate superior character. Less violent than Melville, more enlightened than Knox, he viewed with a brighter and milder eye the united interests of the church and nation. Had he chosen to accommodate himself to the temporising spirit of the age, he might have stood high in royal favour, and become, in point of political influence, the first man of the age. But the true greatness of his character as a Christian minister and a patriot, which shone brightest in adversity, would never have appeared ; nor would the services have been rendered to his church and country which contributed to secure to them those blessings of rational freedom and liberty of conscience which have descended to our own times, and which it should be' our study to preserve and transmit to future generations. James VI. found in men like Bruce, and in the church of which he was an ornament, formidable obstacles to the civil and spiritual despotism which he had destined for his Scottish subjects ; hence his fear of both was equal to his dislike. Im- partial history indorses not the later but the earlier judgment of the King, 390 MRS. MARY BRUNTON. who was so sensible of the valuable services of the church in preserving public tranquillity, during his absence in Sweden on the occasion of his marriage, that in his letters to Bruce he declared that he was " worth the quarter of his king- dom." The person of Robert Bruce was tall and dignified. His countenance WH.S mnjestic, and his appearance in the pulpit grave, and expressive of much authority. His manner of delivery was, in the words of a prcsbyterian his torian, ' an earthquake to his hearers, and he rarely preached but to a weeping auditory.' It is told, as an instance of the effect of his sermons, that a poor Highlander one day came to him after he had concluded, and offered to him his whole wealth' (two cows), on condition that he would make God his friend. Accustomed to continual prayer and intense meditation on religious subjects, his ardent imagination at times appeal's to have lost itself in visions of the divine favour ; a specious, but natural illusion, by which the most virtuous minds have been deceived and supported, when reason and philosophy have been summoned in vain. His knowledge of the Scriptures was extensive, and accurate beyond the attainment of his age. His skill in the languages, and the sciences of those times, not to mention his acquaintance with the laws and constitution of the kingdom, a branch of knowledge possessed by few of his brethren, was equal, if not superior, to that of any of the Scottish reformers. His sermons, of which sixteen were printed in his lifetime, display a boldness of expression, regularity of style, and force of argument, seldom to be found in the Scottish writers of the sixteenth century. A translation of their rich idiomatic Scottish into the English tongue was printed in 1617, and is that which is now most common in Scotland. This great man was buried within the church of Larbert, in which he had often preached during the latter part of his life. People assembled from all quarters to attend his funeral ; and, according to Calderwood, between four and five thousand persons followed his corpse to the grave. It is impossible to con- clude this narrative of his life, without remarking how much of his person and character revived in the Abyssinian Bruce, his descendant in the sixth degree, whose person was also majestic, tind whose mind, while diminished a little in utility by hasty passion and a want of accommodation to circumstances, was also of the most powerful cast, and calculated to produce a great impression upon those around it. BRUNTON, MRS MARY, an eminent moral novelist of the present century was born in the island of Burra, in Orkney, November 1, 1778. Her lathe i was Colonel Thomas Balfour of Elwick, a cadet of one the most respectable fami lies in the county of Orkney. Her mother was Frances Ligonier, only daughter of Colonel Ligonier of the 1 3th dragoons, and niece of the Karl of Ligonier, under whose care she was educated. Previous to her sixteenth year, Mary Balfour had received some instructions in music, and in French and Italian from her mother ; and her education was completed by a short residence at a boarding-school in Edinburgh. At the early age mentioned, she had to under- take the cliarge of her father's household, from which she was removed in her twentieth year, to be the wife of the Rev. Alexander Brunton, minister of the parish of Bolton in East Lothian. In the retirement, and moderate elegance of a Scottish manse, Mrs Brunton was only at first conspicuous for her attention to her household duties. Afterwards, however, the tastes of her husband led her gradually into habits of study, and she went, with Iiis direction and assistance, through a course of reading, in history, philosophy, criticism, ind the belles lettres. The promotion of her husband to a ministerial charge at Edinburgh, which took place six years after her marriage, was favourable to the expansion MRS. MARY BRUNTON. 391 and improvement of her intellect, by introducing her into a circle of society more enlightenejj than any in which she had hitherto moved. The native powers of Tier mind were slowly developed; she ripened from the simple house- wife into the clear-minded and intelligent savante. Yet for many years, she was only known as a well-informed, but perfectly unpretending female. So far from displaying any disposition to active literature, she felt the composition of a letter to be burdensome. A trivial circumstance is said to have operated, with several other causes, in inducing her to attempt a regular work. She had often urged her husband to undertake some literary work, and once she appealed to an intimate friend, who was present, whether he would not publish it. This third party expressed a ready consent, but said he would at least as willingly publish a book of her own writing. This seemed at the time to strike her with a sense of her powers hitherto not entertained, and she asked more than once whether he was in earnest. She then appears to have commenced her novel, entitled " Self Control," of which she had finished a considerable part of the first volume before making even her husband privy to her design. In 1811, the work was published at li'dinburgh, in two volumes, and the impression which it made upon the public was immediate and decisive. It was acknowledged that there were faults of a radical and most unfortunate kind such as the perpetual danger to which the honour of the heroine was exposed, (an intolerable subject of fictitious writing,) but every one appreciated the beauty and correctness of the style, and the acuteness of observation, and loftiness of sentiment, which per- vaded the whole. The modesty of 31rs Brunton, which was almost fantastic, induced her to give this composition to the world without her name. Four years afterwards, she published a second novel in three volumes, entitled " Discipline," which was only admired in a degree inferior to the first She afterwards commenced a third tale under the title " Emmeline," which she did not live to finish. Mrs Brunton had been married twenty years without being blessed with any offspring. In the summer of 1 8 1 8, when a prospect of that blessing occurred, she became impressed with a belief that she should not survive. With a tranquillity, therefore, which could only be the result of great strength of mind, joined to the purest sentiments of religion and virtue, she made every preparation for death, exactly as if she liad been about to leave her home upon a journey. The clothes in which she was to be laid in the grave, were selected by herself; she herself had chosen and labelled some tokens of remembrance for her more intimate friends; and she even prepared with her own hand a list of the indi- viduals to whom she wished intimations of her death to be sent. Yet these anticipations, though so deeply fixed, neither shook her fortitude, nor diminished her cheerfulness. They neither altered her wish to live, nor the ardour with which she prepared to meet the duties of returning health, if returning health were to be her portion. To the inexpressible grief of her husband and friends, and, it may be i ud, of the literary world at large, the unfortunate lady's anticipations proved true. On the 7th of December, she gave birth to a still-born son, and for some days recovered with a rapidity beyond the hopes of her medical attendants. A fever, however, took place, and, advancing with fatal violence, terminated her valu life on the 1 9th, in the forty-first year of her age. The whole mind and character of Mrs Brunton was one pure and per chrysolite" of excellence. We are so agreeably anticipated in an e her worth by an obituary tribute paid to her memory by 1 that we shall make no scruple for laying it before the reader : 302 AT.EXANDRIl BRYCE. No more shall bed-rid pauper watch The gentle rising of the latch, And as she enters shift his place, To hear her voice and see her face. The helpless vagrant, oft relieved, From her hath his last dole received. The circle, social and enlightened, Whose evening hours her converse brightened, Have seen her quit the friendly door, Whose threshold she shall cross no more. And he, by holy ties endear'd, Whose life her loie so sweetly cheer'd, Of her cold clay, the mind's void cell, Hath ta'en a speechless last farewell. Yea, those who never saw her face, Now did on blue horizon trace One mountain of her native land, Nor turn that leaf with eager hand, On which appears the unfinish'd page, Of her whose works did oft engage Untired attention, interest deep, W 7 hile searching, healthful thoughts would creep To the heart's core, like balmy air, To leave a kindly feeling there, AIM! gaze, till stain of fallen tears, Upon the snowy blank appears. Now all who did her friendship claim, With alter'd voice pronounce her name, And quickly turn, with wistful ear, Her praise from stranger's lips to hear, And hoard as saintly relics gain'd, Aught that to her hath e'er pertain'd. The last beautiful allusion is to the unfinished tale of Emmeline, which was published by her husband, Dr Brunton (now professor of Oriental Languages in the university of Edinburgh), along with a brief, but most elegant and touching memoir of her life. BRYCE, (the Rev.) ALEXANDER, an eminent geometrician, was born in tlie year 171 3, at Boarland in the parish of Kincardine, and received the first rudiments of learning at tiie school of Downe, Perthshire. He studied after- wards at the university of Edinburgh, where his proficiency in mathematics and practical astronomy, early attracted the notice and secured for him the patronage of professor Maclaurin. At the particular request of that celebrated man, he went to Caithness, in May 1740, as tutor to a gentleman's son, but chiefly to construct a map of the northern coast ; the number of shipwrecks rendering this, at the time, an object of considerable national importance. During a residence of three years, and in defiance of many threats from the peasantry, (\vhich made it necessary for him to go always armed,) who did not relish so accurate an examination of their coast, from motives of disloyalty, or because they were afraid, it would deprive them of two principal sources of in- come smuggling and plunder from the shipwrecks, he accomplished at his own expense, the geometrical survey, and furnished " A Map of the north coast of Britain, from Raw Stoir of Assynt, to Wick in Caithness, with the harbours and rocks, and an account of the tides in the Pentland Firth." This map was r.fterwards published by the philosophical, now the Royal, Society of Edinburgh in 1744. Mr Arrowsmith, it may be mentioned, has lately pronounced it to bo ALEXANDER BRYCE. 93 very accurate, after a minute examination, while preparing materials for his large map of Scotland. On his return to Edinburgh in 1743, Mr Bryce gave very efficient aid, with his friend the reverend Mr Wallace of Haddo's Hole church, in verifying the necessary calculations submitted to them by doctor Webster, previous to the in- stitution, by act of parliament, of the fund for a provision for the widows of the Scottish clergy ; the regular increase of which since, and its present flourishing state, form the best encomium of those Avbo laboured for its establishment. In June, 1744, he Avas licensed to preach, by the reverend Presbytery of Dunblane ; and having received a presentation by James, earl of Morton, to the church and parish of Kirknewton, within the Presbytery of Edinburgh, he was ordained to serve tliat cure, in August, 1745. From his knowledge of the inland geography of Scotland, and line of the roads, he Avas enabled, this year, to furnish the quarter-master general of the army of the Duke of Cumberland Avith impor- tant information regarding the march of the forces, in subduing the rebellion. In the winter of 1745, and spring of 1746, he taught the mathematical classes in the university of Edinburgh, at the desire, and during the last illness of Professor Maclaurin, who died in June following. Mr Bryce expressed his sorrow for the loss of his friend in verse, of which the following is a specimen: Ton angel guards that wait his soul, Aruaz'd at aught from earth so bright, Find nothing new from pole to pole; To show him in a clearer light. Joyful he bears glad news 1 on high, And tells them through celestial space ; See Newton hastens down the sky, To meet him with a warm embrace! The list'ning choirs around them throng, Their love and wonder fond to show ; On golden harps they tune the song, Of Nature's laws in worlds below. O Forbes, Foulks, loved Morton, mourn ; Edina, London, Paris, sigh ; With tears bedew his costly urn, And pray Earth light upon him lie. In the year 1750, haA'ing occasion to visit Stirling, and knowing that, by an act of the Scottish parliament, this borough had the keeping of the Pint Jug, the standard, by special statute, for weight and for liquid and dry measure in Scotland, he requested a sight of it from the magistrates. Having .been re- ferred to the council house, a pewter pint jug, which had been kept suspended from the roof of the apartment, was taken down and given to him ; after minutely examining it, he Avas convinced that it could not be the standard. The discovery Avas in vain communicated to the magistrates, who were ill able to ap- preciate their loss. It excited very different feelings in the mind of an anti- quary and a mathematician ; and resolved, if possible, to recover this valuable antique, he immediately instituted a search; which, though conducted with much patient industry during part of this and the following year, proved un- 1 A few days before his friend's death, he saw him institute a calculation for ascertaining the proportion that existed between the axis of the earth and the diameter of its equator. It proceeded on data sent him by the Earl of Morton, president of the Royal hociety, con- listing of observations made in Peru by the French mathematicians, and communicated at London by Don Antonio, who was taken prisoner at Cape Breton. The proportion ascer- ,ained was very nearly that which Sir Isaac Newton had predicted ; being as 22i : 222, and iffor.led particular gratification. These are the news he is supposed to bear. 3 D 394 ALEXANDER BRYCE. av.-tiling. In the spring of 1752, it occurred to him, that this standard might have been borrowed by some of the braziers or coppersmiths, for the purpose of making legal measures for the citizens ; and having learned that a person of this description, called Urquhart, had joined the rebel forces in 1745, that hit furniture and shop utensils had been brought to public sale on his not returning ; and that various articles which had not been sold, were thrown into a garret as useless, he obtained permission to inspect them ; and to his great satisfaction, discovered, under a mass of lumber, the precious object of his long research. Thus was recovered the only legal standard of weight and measure in Scotland ; after it had been offered, in ignorance, for public sale, and thrown aside unsold as trash, and long after it had been considered by its constitutional guardians a* irretrievably losf. The standard Stirling pint jug is made of brass, in the form of a hol- low truncated cone, and weighs 14 pounds, 10 ounces, 1 drop, and 18 grains, Scotch troy. The mean diameter of the mouth is 4.17 inches. Thf mean diameter of the bottom 5.25 inches, and the mean depth 6 inches Eng- lish. On the front, near the mouth, in alto relievo, is a shield and lion ram- pant, the arms of Scotland : and near the bottom another shield, and an ape, passant gardant, with the letter S below, supposed to have been intended as the arms of Stirling. The arms at present are a wolf. The ape must hate been put on therefore inadvertently by the maker, or the town must have changed its arms at a period subsequent to the time when the standard was or- dered to be made. The handle is fixed with two brass nails ; the whole is of rude workmanship, and indicates great antiquity. By an act of the Scottish parliament, Edinburgh had the keeping of the stan- dard ell ; Perth the reel ; Lanark the pound : Linlithgow the firlot, and Stir- ling the pint jug ; an arrangement made by the legislature, in the view of improving the internal commerce of the country, by checking the frauds which the traffickers of a rude age may be supposed to have often attempted, and be- cause the commodities, to which these different standards referred, were known to have been supplied in greater abundance by the districts and towns to whose care they were respectively committed. Hence it may be inferred, that Lanark was then the principal market for wool ; Perth for yarn ; Edin- burgh for cloth ; Linlithgow for grain ; and Stirling for distilled and fermented liquors. The Stirling jug is mentioned in act* of Parliament fis being in thb town before the reign of James II. in 1437: and the last mention made of it is in the reign of James VI., in an " Act of Parliament, 19 February, 1618, auent set- tling the measures and weights of Scotland." No accurate experiments appear to have been afterwards made with it for fixing the legal quantity of these mea- sures and weights, till the following by Mr Bryce in 1762-3; a period of about one hundred and thirty-five years ! Having been permitted, after recovering the Standard jug, to carry it with him to Edinburgh, his first object was to ascertain precisely, by moans of it, the number of cubic inches, and parts of a cubic inch, in the true Scotch pint. For this purpose the mouth of the jug was made exactly horizontal, by ap- plying to it a spirit level ; a minute silver wire of the thickness of a hair, with a plummet attached to each end, was laid across the mouth, and water poured gently in, till, with a magnifying glass, it was seen just to touch the wire : the water was then carefully weighed in a balance, the beam of which would turn with a single grain, when 96 ounces were in each scale. After seventeen trials with clear spring and river water, several of which were made in jpresence of the magistrates of Edinburgh, the content of the jug was found ALEXANDER BRYCE. 395 His next object was to determine accurately, how many of these grains were contained ma cubic inch of water. With this view, a cylindrical brass vessel made w.th great accuracy, by a scale of Bird, the celebrated mathen.ati.al instrument-maker of London, to contain 100 cubic inches. This vessel was hlled several tunes with the same water as in the trials with the \u s and iu content was found to weigh 25,318 grains, English troy. This number dmded by 100, gives 253 ^grains, as the weight of a cubic inch of water ' therefore, 26180 ( 253-11 J ==103 T^I tne exact number of cubic inches, and parts of a cubic inch, in the standard Scotch pint : 51^, cubic inches in the chopin : 25 Iooo oubic inches in the mutchkin ; and so on, proportionally, in the other smaller Scotch measures. Mr Bryce next applied the Standard jug to fix the legal size of the different measures for grain ; which he compared with some of the English dry measures. By act of parliament, 19 February, 1618, formerly mentioned, it is ordained, that the wheat and pease firlot- shall contain 21 1 pints; and the bear and oat firlot 31 pinis of the just Stirling jug. Therefore, since there are 103^ cubic inches in the standard Scotch pint, there will be 21 97 s35 - cubic inches in the wheat and pease firlot; 549'J^ in the peck; and 13TJJ? in the lip. pie in the bean and oat firlot, 3205, cubic inches; 801^ in the peck ; and 200'^ in tne 'ippie. The excess of a boll of bear above a boll of wheat was found to be precisely 5 pecks bear measure, and 1 mutchkin, without the difference of a single gill : or, a boll of bear is more than a boll of wheat, by 7 pecks 1 A lippie, wheat measure, wanting I gill. The English corn bushel contains 2178 cubic inches, which is less than the Scotch wheat firlot, by 19.335 inches, or three gills ; so that 7 firlots of wheat will make 7 English bushels and I lipj.ie. The English corn bushel is less than the barley firiot, by 1 peck, 3^ lippies nearly. The legal English bushel, by which gaugers are ordered to make their re- turns of malt, contains 2150.42 cubic inches, which is less than the wheat firlot, 4(j.915 cubic inches, or I chopin, wanting ^ gill; and less than the bear firlot by 1055.104 cubic inches, or 2 bear pecks, wanting 7 gills. A Scotch barley boll contains 5 bushels, 3 pecks, 2 lippies, and a little more, according to the Winchester gallon. A Scotch barley boll, according to the legal measure, contains 6 bushels, wanting a little more than i lippie. A Scotch chalder, (16 bolls of barley,) is equal to 11 quarters, 6 bushels, and 3 lippies, Winchester measure. A Scotch chalder of wheat is equal to 8 quarters, 2 pecks, and 1 lippie, Winchester measure. A wheat firlot made according to tlie dimensions mentioned in the Scotch act of parliament, 1618, viz., 19-j- inches diameter, at top and bottom, and 7-$- inches in height, Scotch measure, would be less than the true wheat firlot, (or 21 pints of the Standard jug) by a Scotch chopin: a chalder of wheat measured with this firlot would fall short of the true quantity, 1 firlot, 2 pecks, or nearly 2 per cent. A barley firlot made according to the dimensions in the said act, viz., having the same diameter at top and bottom as the wheat firlot, and 10 inches in height, Scotch measure, would be less than the true firlot, (or 31 pints of the Standard jug) by 5 mutchkins : and a chalder of bear, measured with such a 396 ALEXANDER BRYCE. lirlot, would rail short of the just quantity, 2 liriots, 2 pecks, and nearly 2 li[>l>ies, or 4 per cent. These very remarkable mistakes must have proceeded from the ignorance or inaccuracy of the persons authorized by parliament to make the calculations, and to determine the exact dimensions of the firlot measure. For suppose a lirlot were mad of the following dimensions, viz., 20 inches diameter, English measure, at top and bottom, and 7 inches in depth, it would contain 21 pints (the true wheat and pease firlot) and only -J- of a gili more. A firlot of the same diameter as above, at top and bottom, and 10^ inches in depth, would contain 31 pints (the true bear and oat firlot) and only 2 gills more: but if, instead of 10^, it be made 10 inches in depth, it will be less than 31 pints, (the true Standard measure) only of a single gill. By the greater of these firlots were to be measured bear, oats, and malt ; by the less wheat, rye, beans, pense, and salt. According to the act of parliament in 1 6 18, to which reference -has been made, the Scotch pint contains of the clear running water of Leith three pounds ami seven ounces, French troy weight, and this is ordained to be the weight of Scotland; therefore, in the Scotch pound there are 7616 troy grains ; and in the Scotch ounce 476 troy grains ; and so on proportionally, with regard to the other Scotch weights. In this way, by the recovery of the standard Stirling pint jug, canons of easy application resulted, for determining the just quantity of the measures, liquid and dry, and also of the weights in Scotland, and therefore of great public utility, by settling disputes and preventing litigation in that part of the empire. After having obtained the above results by means of the Standard jug, All Bryce superintended, at the desire of the magistrates of Edinburgh, the ad- justment of the weights and measures, kept by the dean of Guild ; and " fol his good services to the city," was made a burgess and Guild brother in January, 1751. Several detached memoirs by Mr Bryce were published by the Royal Society of London ; particularly " An account of a Comet observed by him in 1766 ;" " A new method of measuring the Velocity of the Wind;" " An Experiment to ascertain to what quantity of Water a fall of Snow on the Earth's surface is equal." His observations on the transits of Venus, G-ii June, 1761, and 3rd June, 1769, were considered by astronomers as important, in solving the grand problem. In May, 1767, he was consulted by the trustees for procuring surveys of the lines proposed for the canal betw'een the Forth and Clyde, and received their thanks for his remarks, afterwards communicated to them in writing, on Mr Smeaton's first printed report. About this time, he was introduced to Stuart 31ackenzie, lord privy seal of Scotland, who, as a lover of the arts and sciences, highly respecting his genius and acquirements, obtained for him soon after, the office of one of his majesty's chaplains in ordinary ; and, during the remainder of his life, honoured him with his friendship and patronage. He planned for that gentleman the elegant observatory at Belmont castle, where also are still to be seen, an instrument contrived by him for ascertaining the magnifying powers of telescopes, and a horizontal marble dial, made with great precision, to indicate the hour, the ininii! -, and every ten seconds. In 1770, his lordship having communicated an account of a phenomenon observed by lord Charles Cavendish, doctor Habberden, and himself, viz., " that a less quantity of rain (by a difference which was considerable) fell into the rain gauges placed on the top of Westminster abbey arid an adjoining house, than into those placed below," and for which they found it difficult to account, Mr Bryce sent to his lordship, on the 14th December, an ingenious solution of the fact PATRICK BRYDONE, F.R.S. 397 In 1772, he wrote "Remarks on the Barometer for measuring Altitudes ; showing the uncertainty and limited use of the instrument, as then commonly used for that purpose, and the means by which it might be rendered more perfect, and greater precision attained. These remarks were sent to lord privy seal in January, 1773. In a map of the Three Lothians engraved by Kitchen of London, and published in 1773, by Andrew and Mostyn Armstrong, " the scales of Longitude and Latitude are laid down agreeably to the observations of the Rev. Mr Bryce at Kirknewton manse." In April, 1774, in consequence of certain apparently insurmountable difficulties, he was consulted by the magis- trates of Stirling on the subject of supplying the town with water: these dif- ficulties he removed, by taking accurately all the different levels; making the calculations for the size of the leaden pipes and the reservoir, and fixing the situation for its being placed. For this service he had the freedom of the town conferred on him. In 1776, he made all the requisite calculations for an epitome of the solar system on a large scale, afterwards erected by the farl of Buclian at his seat at Kirkhill. In case of disputes about the extent of fields exchanged by neighbouring proprietors, or the line of their marches, he was generally chosen sole arbiter, and from his knowledge in land survey- ing, and the confidence reposed in him, had it often in his power to render them essential service. Mr Bryce used to send various meteorological observa- tions and other detached notices to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine. From the time of his ordination in 1745, till his death on the 1st January, 1786, he discharged with great fidelity, all the duties of his pastoral office ; ;md excelled particularly in that species of didactic discourse known in Scot- land, under the name of lecture. His lectures, however, were never fully written, but spoken from notes; and he left no sermons for publication. In early life he composed several songs, adapted to some of the most favourite Scottish airs, and his stanzas, in " The Birks of Invermay," have been long before the world. For about three years before his death, his greatest amusement was in writing poetry, chiefly of a serious and devotional cast ; which, though not composed for the public eye, is read with satisfaction by his tYiemU, and valued by them as an additional proof of his genius, and a tran- script of that enlightened piety, uprightness of mind, and unshaken trust in his Creator, which characterized him through the whole of life. BRYUONE, PATRICK, F. R. S., the well known author of A Tour in Sicily and Malta, one of the most entertaining works in the Language, was the son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood of Dumbarton, and born in 1741. Having received an excellent university education, which qualified him for the duties of a travelling preceptor, he was engaged in that capacity, first by Mr Beckford, of Somerly in Suffolk, and afterwards Mr Fullarton, who was known in after life as commander of a large body of troops in India, and finally as one of the three commissioners for the government of Trinidad. His excursion with the former gentleman took place in 1767-8; the latter, in 1770. In the secon.l tour, he visited Sicily and Malta, which were then almost unknown to the English. Having written an account of this journey in a series of letters to Mr Beckford, he was induced by a consideration of the uninformed state of the British public upon this subject, to publish his work in 1773, under the title of " A Tour through Sicily and Malta." This work is not only a most original and amusing narrative, but it contains a great deal of scientific knowledge, especially regarding the temperature of the air, which was the object of Brydone's particular study. For the purpose of carrying on his scientific obser- vations, he travelled with an apparatus as perfect as could then be procured or as it was possible to carry in the luggage of a traveller. Having returned to 398 ELSPITII BUCHAN. England in 1771, he obtained a respectable appointment under government, and after the publication of his travels, which procured for him no common share of reputation and respect, was nominated a member of several learned societies, particularly of the Royal Society, London. In the transactions of this learned body, are several papers of Mr Brydone, chiefly on the subject of electricity, of which he was a profound student, and a close and anxious observer. He spent the latter part of his life in retirement, at Lennel House, near Cold- stream, where he was visited by the most distinguished persons in literature and public life. The author of Marmion has introduced into that work, tho follow- ing episode respecting Mr Brydone : " Where Lennel's convent closed their march : There now is left but one frail arch, Yet mourn thou not its cells ; Our time a fair exchange has made ; Hard by, in hospitable shade, A reverend pilgrim dwells, Well worth the whole Bernardine brood, That e'er wore sandal, frock, or hood." Patrick Brydone died at Lennel in 1818, at an advanced age. BUCHAN, ELSPITH, the leader of a small sect of fanatics, now extinct, was the daughter of John Simpson, who kept an inn at Fitney-Can, the half way house between Banff and Portsoy. She was born in 1738, and educated in the Scottish Episcopal communion. Having been sent when a girl to Glasgow, in order to enter into a life of service, she married Robert Buchan, a workman in the pottery belonging to her master, wiln whom she lived for several years, and had several children. Having changed her original profession of faith for that of her husband, who was a burgher-seceder, her mind seems to have become per- plexed with religious fancies, as is too often the case with those who alter their creed. She fell into a habit of interpreting the Scriptures litex-ally, and began to promulgate certain strange doctrines, which she derived in this manner from holy writ. Having now removed to Irvine, she drew over to her own way of thinking, Mr Hugh Whyte, a Relief clergyman, who consequently abdicated his charge, and became her chief apostle. The sect was joined by persons of a rank of life in which no such susceptibility was to be expected. Mr Hunter, a writer, and several trading people in good circumstances, were among the con- verts. After having indulged their absurd fancies for several years at Irvine, the mass of the people at length rose in April, 1784, and assembled in a threaten- ing and tumultuous manner around Mr Whyte's house, which had become the tabernacle of the new religion, and of which they broke all the windows. The Buchanites felt this insult so keenly, that they left the town to the number of forty-six persons, and, proceeding through Mauchline, Cumnock, Sanquhar, and Thornhill, did not halt till they arrived at a farmhouse, two miles south from the latter place, and thirteen from Dumfries, where they hired the out-houses for their habitation, in the hope of being permitted, in that lonely scene, to exercise their religion without further molestation. Mrs Buchan continued to be the great mistress of the ceremonies, and Mr Whyte to be the chief officiating priest They possessed considerable property, which all enjoyed alike, and though several men were accompanied by their wives, all the responsibilities of the married state were given up. Some of them wrought gratuitously at their trades, for the bene- fit of those who employed them ; but they professed only to consent to this, in order that they might have opportunities of bringing over others to their own views. They scrupulously abjured all worldly considerations whatsoever, wishing only to lead a quiet and holy life, till the commencement of the Millennium. 01- ELSPITH BUCHAN. 399 the day of judgment, which they believed to be at hand. Observing, they said, how the young ravens are fed, and how the lilies grow, we assure ourselves that God will feed and clothe us. Mrs Buchan, who was said to have given herself out to be the Virgin Mary, at first denied that she was so. Instead of being the mother of Christ, she said, after the tiesh, she was his daughter after the spirit. The little republic existed for some time, without any thing occurring to mar their happiness, except the occasional rudeness of unbelieving neighbours. At length, as hope sickened, worldly feelings appear to have returned upon some of the mem- bers ; and, notwithstanding all the efforts which Mrs Buchan could make to keep her flock together, a few returned to Irvine. It would seem that as the faith of her followers declined, she greatly increased the extravagance of her pretensions, and the rigour of her discipline. It is said that when any person was suspected of an intention to leave the society, she ordered him to be locked up, and ducked every day in cold water, so that it required some little address in any one to get out of her clutches. In the year 1786, the following facts were reported by some of the seceding members on their return to the west " The distribution of provisions she kept in her own hand, and took special care that they should not pamper their bodies with too much food, and every one behoved to be en- tirely directed by her. The society being once scarce of money, she told them she had a revelation, informing her they should have a supply of cash from hea- ven : accordingly, she took one of the members out with her, and caused him to hold two corners of a sheet, while she held the other two. Having continued for a considerable time, without any shower of money falling upon it, the man at last tired, and left Mrs Buchan to hold the sheet herself: Mrs Buchan, in a short time after, came in with 5 sterling, and upbraided the man for his unbe- lief, which she said was the only cause that prevented it from coming sooner. Many of the members, however, easily accounted for this pretended miracle, and shrewdly suspected that the money came from her own hoard. That she had a considerable purse was not to be doubted, for she fell on many ways to rob the members of every thing they had of value. Among other things, she informed them one evening, that they were all to ascend to heaven next morning ; there- fore it was only necessary they should lay aside all their vanities and ornaments, ordering them, at the same time, to throw their rings, watches, &c. into the ash- hole, which many were foolish enough to do, while others more prudently hid every thing of this kind that belonged to them. Next morning she took out all the people to take their flight. After they had waited till they were tired, not one of them found themselves any lighter than they were the day before, but remained with as firm a footing on earth as ever. She again blamed their un- belief said that want of faith alone prevented their ascension; and complain of the hardship she was under, in being obliged, on account of their unbe continue with them in this world. She at last fell upon an expedient to in them light enough to ascend : nothing less was found requisite than to fi forty days and forty nights. The experiment was immediately put and several found themselves at death's door in a very short time. She ^ obliged to allow them some spirits and water; but many resolved no submit to such regimen, and went off altogether. We know not," thus concl. the statement, " if the forty days be ended ; but a few experiment* oi will leave her, in the end, sole proprietor of the society's funds." What adds to the curiosity of this strange tale of fanaticism, is tl Buchan'. husband was still living in pursuit of his ordinary trade, and a adherent of the burgher-secedes One of her children a boy ie o fourteen, lived with the father; two girls of more advanced age -ere among her >wn followers. Notwithstanding her increased absurd.ty, and we may add, the 400 WILLIAM BUCIIAN, M.D. increased tyranny of her behaviour, she continued to have a few followers in 1791, when she approached her last scene. Among these w;is her first apostle, 3Ir Whyte. Finding that she was about to go the way of all the earth, she called her disciples together, and exhorted them to continue steadfast and unani- mous in their adherence to the doctrine which they had received from her. She told them she had one secret to communicate a last desperate effort at imposi- tion that she was in reality the Virgin Mary, and mother of our Lord ; that she was the same woman mentioned in the Revelations as being clothed with the sun, and who was driven into the wilderness ; that she had been wandering in the world ever since our Saviour's days, and only for some time past had so- journed in Scotland : that though she might appear to die, they needed not be discouraged, for she would only sleep a little, and in a short time would visit them again, and conduct them to the new Jerusalem. After her death, which took place, May 1791, it was a long time before her votaries would straighten or dress the corpse ; nor would they coffin her, until obliged by the smell ; and after that they would not bury her, but huilt up the coffin in a corner of the barn, always expecting that she would rise again from the dead, according to her promise. At last, the neighbouring country people, shocked with these pro- ceedings, went to a justice of peace, and got an order that she should be buried ; so that the famous Mrs Buchan was at length reduced to a level with all the dead generations of her kind. BUCHAN, WILLIAM, M. D. a popular medical writer of great celebrity, was born in 1729, at Ancrum in Roxburghshire. His grandfather had been obliged, for some time, to reside with his family in Holland, on account of the religious troubles which preceded the Revolution. His father possessed a small estate, in addition to which he rented a farm from the Duke of Roxburgh. His genius for medicine was displayed before he could have received any adequate instruc- tion ; and even when a school-boy, he was at once the physician and surgeon of the village. Nevertheless, being destined by his friends for the church, he re- paired to Edinburgh, to study divinity. At the university he spent the unusual time of nine years, studying anything rather than theology. At this period of his life, mathematics and botany were among his favourite pursuits. Finally, he devoted himself wholly to medicine. He enjoyed, at this time, the friendship of the illustrious Gregory, whose liberal maxims are believed to have had great in- fluence over his future life. Before taking his degree, he was induced, by the invitation of a fellow-student, to settle in practice for some time in Yorkshire. While established in that district, he became a candidate for the situation of Physician to the Foundling Hospital, then supported by parliament at Ackworth, and, after a fair trial of skill with ten professional men, was successful. In this situation he laid the foundation of that knowledge of the diseases of children, which afterwards appeared so conspicuous in his writings. Having returned to Edinburgh to take out his degree, he became acquainted with a well-connected lady of the name of CLAUDIUS BUCHANAN, D.D. 403 stand before God ; and the books were opened : and another book was opened, which was the book of life : And the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them : and they were judged every man according to their works." Buchanan was very tender- hearted, insomuch, that when he heard a pathetic tale recounted, he could not abstain from weeping. He was equally subject to shed tears when his bosom was excited with joy, gratitude, and admiration. In his conversation, he was modest, mild, and unassuming, and distinguished by great affability ; always the best and truest marks of a man of poetical genius. His poems and hymns, which have been repeatedly printed, are allowed to be equal to any in the Gaelic lan- guage for style, matter, and harmony of versification. 'Die pieces entitled " La a> Bhveitheanais >' and " an Claigionn >' are the most celebrated, and are read with perfect enthusiasm by all Highlanders. Though the circumstances of this ingenious poet were of the humblest description, he was most religiously cheerful and contented under his lot He died, on the 2nd of July, 1768, under very painful circumstances. On returning home from a long journey, he found two of his children lying sick of a fever. Shortly after, six more of them were seized by it, together with himself and two of his servants. While his family lay in this sad condition, his wife could prevail upon no one to engage in her service, and being herself in a peculiarly delicate condition, she was unable to do much for their comfort. The poor poet soon became delirious, and, in a few days, he and all his family were swej,t off, leaving only his wife to lament his fate, and her own melancholy condition. 1 BUCHANAN, CLAUDIUS, D. D. Few persons have engaged with greater zeal, or met with greater success, in the business of the civilization of India, in spreading the knowledge of the Christian Religion through the eastern world, and in mak- ing Europeans better acquainted with that interesting country, than the Rev. Dr Buchanan, who was born at Cambuslang, on the 12th March, 1766. His father, Alexander Buchanan, followed the honourable profession of a school-master ; and if we may judge from his success in life, he appeal's to have been a man of some abilities, and better qualified than ordinary teachers for the discharge of the peculiar duties of his office. Before his death, he was Rector of the Grammar School of Falkirk. His mother's name was Somers, daughter of Mr Claudius Somers, who was an elder in the parish of Cambuslang. He is repre- sented as having been one of those who received their first impressions of reli- gion under the ministry of the Rev. Mr M'Culloch, the parish minister, and which were confirmed afterwards by the celebrated Mr George Whitfield. A certain class of Scottish dissenters publicly declared, that all such impressions were a delusion of the devil, and in the most abusive language reviled Whitfield, and all who defended his cause. But be this as it may, Mr Somers and a good many others became reformed characters ; and during the course of a long life, gave undeniable evidence that they were better moral men and better members of society. In 1773, Dr Buchanan was sent to Inverary, in the shire of Argyle, where lie remained under the care of his father's relations till 177U. He was early sent to school; and besides being taught to read English, to write, and cast accounts, he was initiated into a knowledge of Latin. When only fourteen years of age, he was engaged to be tutor to the two sons of Campbell of Dunstaffnage. It i? by no means an uncommon case in Scotland for young men to be employed, at that tender age, as domestic tutors in remote parts of the country, and at a dis- 1 For the greater part of the information contained in this article I am indebted to " Bibli- otheca Scoto-Celtica, an Account of all the Books which have been printed in the Gaelic Lan- guage. By John Reid." Glasgow, 1832. 401 CLAUDIUS BUCHANAN, T).D. tance from any school. He continued in this situation for two years, and then repaired to the university of Glasgow, in 1782. Here his funds permitted him to remain only for two sessions. In 1784, he went to the island of Islay, and was tutor in the family of Mr Campbell of Knockmelty. In the following yeai he removed to Carradell, in Kintyre, as tutor to Mr Campbell of Carradell. In 1786 he returned to Glasgow College, with the intention of prosecuting his stu- dies there, preparatory to his commencing the study of divinity ; for it had al- ways been his intention to be a clergyman of the Church of Scotland. At the end of the session, however, he was struck with the strange and romantic, idea ot' making a tour of Europe on foot. He seems to have been highly delighted with Dr Goldsmith's poetry, and particularly with his Traveller. Having perused some accounts of Goldsmith's adventures, he became inspired with a wish to at- tempt something of the same kind. He could not, like the poet of Auburn, play on the flute, but he was a tolerable performer on the fiddle, and he foolishly ima- gined, that with its assistance, he might be able to accomplish what he had so much at heart. He was a pretty good player of Scotch reels ; and with this slender recommendation, and hardly any other provision against want, he deter- mined to sally forth. He accordingly left Edinburgh in the month of August, 1787. He had care- fully concealed his design from his parents, lest it should be the occasion of giving them pain, for lie seems to have been well aware in what light his impru- dence would be viewed by others. What rond he took, or how long lie was on his journey between Edinburgh and Newcastle, is not known. But he arrived there, as it would seem, sufficiently disgusted with his undertaking ; for, instead of directing his course to the capital by land, he embarked in a collier at North Shields, and sailed for the metropolis, where he arrived on the 2d of September. Here he was as much, if not more at a loss, than ever. At last, seeing an ad- vertisement in a paper, that a clerk was wanted, after having suffered incredibly from hunger and cold, he applied and obtained this paltry appointment. By habits of industry and attention to business, he recommended himself to his em- ployer, and after various incidents he at last engaged in the service of a solicitor, with whom he remained for nearly three years. This employment, though exceedingly trifling, was sufficient to supply him food and clothes. He describes himself, at this period, as having little or no sense of religion upon his mind. He did not attend church regularly; and the Sunday was generally spent in idleness, though at no time of his life was he given to habits of dissipation. About this time he got acquainted with the Rev. John Newton of St Mary's, Woolnoth, London, the friend of Cowper, who intro- duced him to the celebrated Henry Thornton. This latter person, whose heart and fortune were alike bounteous, was the chief occasion of his being afterwards so successful and distinguished in life. As Mr Buchanan had now formed the resolution of becoming a clergyman, though he could not regularly enter the church of England, for want of a university education, Mr Thornton offered him the Chaplaincy of the Sierra Leone company, in which association he bore a leading part. The appointment was accepted by Mr i'uchannn, but, for some unknown reason, was n<;t acted upon. Mr Thornton, however, generously re- solved not to leave his ward destitute or unprovido-,1. He sent him to Queens' College, Cambridge, which was then conducted by iiis friend Dr Mihior, Dean of Carlisle. Mr Buchanan was admitted into this Society in 1791, and in the 25th year of his age. It has been mentioned, that he was two sessions at the university of Glasgow, but it may be doubted whether this was of essential ser- vice to him, so different are the regulations, customs, and habits of the two esta- blishments. Ho was disposed to enter as a Sizar, that is a scholar of the lowest CLAUDIUS BUCHANAN, D.D. 405 rank, the same t retirement he still found pleasure in prosecuting the studies and scientific pur- suits which had engrossed the busier part of his life. His garden occupied much of his attention ; he introduced into his grounds many curious plants, shrubs, and flowers ; he contributed largely to the scientific journals of the dy, 'par- ticularly the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, the Edinburgh Journal of Science, the transactions of the Linnaaan Society of London, the Memoirs of the Hibernian Natural History Society, and the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Also in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society are several papers taken from his statistical survey of the provinces under the Presidency of Fort William, deposited in the Library of the East India Company : these papers, at the instance of l)r Buchanan were liberally communicated to the Society, accompanied with explanations by Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Esq., one of the Directors. In 1819, he published his History of the Kingdom of Nepal, already mentioned, and in the same year a Genealogy of the Hindoo Gods, which he had drawn up some years before with the assistance of an intel- ligent Brahman. In 1822 appeared his Account of the Fishes of the Ganges, with plates. Dr Buchanan was connected with several distinguished literary and scientific societies. He was a member of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta a fellow of the Royal Society, the Linnaean Society, and Society .of Antiquaries of London an ordinary member of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, &c. &c. In 1826, he was appointed a deputy lieutenant for Perthshire, and took a warm interest in the politics of the day. His own principles were Tory, and he was not a little apt to be violent and overbearing in discussion with men of the opposite party. But although hasty in his tem- per and violent in his politics, Dr Buchanan was of a generous and liberal dis- position : he was extremely charitable to the poor, warm in his personal attach- ments, and just and honourable in his public capacity of magistrate. He mar- ried late in life, and fondness for the society of his children, joined with stud- ious habits, left him little leisure or inclination for mixing in the gayeties of the fashionable world. He lived, however, on terms of good understanding and easy intercourse with his neighbours. His own high attainments and extensive information eminently qualified him for enjoying the conversation and appear- ing to advantage in the society of men of liberal education, and to such his house was always open. His intimate acquaintance with oriental manners, geo- graphy, and history, made his conversation interesting and instructive ; his un- obtrusive manners, his sober habits, his unostentatious and unaffected hospitality made him an agreeable companion and a good neighbour ; while the warmth and steadiness of. his attachments rendered his friendship valuable. The following high estimate of his character we find in Dr Robertson's statistical account of the Parish of Callander, so early as the year 1793. The most learned person who is known to have belonged to this parish is Dr Francis Buchanan, at present in the East Indies. In classical and medical knowledge he has few equals, an I he is well acquainted with the whole system of nature.' Dr Buchanan carried on an extensive correspondence with men of eminence in the literary and scientific world ; he repeatedly received the public thanks of the Court of Directors, and of the Governor-General in council, for his useful collections and his information I. 3F 410 GEOHGE BUCHANAN. on Indian affaire ; and when his former patron IVIarquis Wellesley went as Lori Lieutenant to Ireland he was solicited to accompany him in an official capa- city an offer which his declining health and love of domestic quiet induced him to decline. Dr Buchanan died, June 15th, 1829, in the 67th year of his age. BUCHANAN, GEORGE, one of the most distinguished reformers, political and religious, of the sixteenth century, and the best Latin poet which modern Europe has produced, was born in the parish of Killearn, Stirlingshire, in February, 1506, "of a family," to use his own words, "more ancient than wealthy." His father, Thomas, was the second son of Thomas Buchanan of Drumikill, from whom he inherited the farm of Moss, on the western bank of the water of Blane, the house where, though it has been several times rebuilt, still, in honour of the subject oi this memoir, preserves its original shape, and dimensions, with a considerable portion of its original materials. His mother was Agnes Heriot of the family of Tabroun in East Lothian. The Buchanans of Drumikill were highly respectable, being a branch of the family of Buchanan of Buchanan, which place they held by charter as far back as the reign of Malcom III. Antiquity of descent, however, is no preservative against poverty, of which our poet's family had their full share, for the bankruptcy of his grandfather, the laird of Drumikill, and the death of his father while in the flower of his age, left George Buchanan, when yet a child, with four brothers and three sisters, with no provision for their future subsistence but their mother's industry. She appears, however, to have been a woman of excellent qualities ; and by the pmdect management of the farm, which she retained in her own hands, brought up her family in a respectable manner, and had the satisfaction of seeing them all comfortably settled. George, the third son, received the rudiments of his education in the school of his native village, which was at that time one of the most celebrated in Scotland ; and having at an early period given indications of genius, his maternal uncle, James Heriot, was induced to undertake the care and expence of his education ; and, in order to give him every possible advantage, sent him, in 1520, when fifteen years of age, to pro- secute his studies in the university of Paris. Here he studied with the greatest diligence, and impelled, as he has himself told us, partly by his inclination, and partly by the necessity of performing the exercises of his class, put forth the first blossom of a poetical genius that was afterwards to bear the rich fruits of immortality. Scarcely, however, had his bright morning dawned when it became suddenly overcast. Before he had completed his second year, his uncle died, leaving him in a foreign land, exposed te all the miseries of poverty, aggravated by bodily infirmity, occasioned, most probably, by the severity of his studies, for, at the same time that he was in public competing with the greatest talent of the several nations of Europe, who, as to a common fountain, were assembled at this far famed centre of learning, he was teaching himself Greek, in which he was latterly a great proficient. He was now obliged to return home, and for upwards of a twelvemonth was incapable of applying to any business. In 1523, he joined the auxiliaries brought over from France by Albany, then Regent of Scotland ; and served as a private soldier in one campaign against the English. Ho tells us that he took this step from a desire to learn the art of war ; but per- haps necessity was as strong a prompter as military ardour. Whatever were his motives, he marched with the army commanded by the Regent in person, who entered England and laid siege to the castle of \Verk, in the end of October, 1523. Repulsed in all his attempts on the place, Albany, from the disaffection among his troops and the daily increasing strength of the enemy, soon found himself under the necessity of re-crossing the Tweed ; and being overtaken by a (E(D)ME TKOif THE ORIGINAL IK THE TTNTVERSiry OF ZDINBTIRQH. GEOKGE BUCHANAN. 411 =evere snow storm in a night march toward Lauder, lost a great part of his army ; Buchanan escaped, but, completely cured of his warlike enthusiasm, if any such senti- ment ever inspired him, was confined the rest of the winter to his bed. In the en- suing spring, being considerably recovered, and having completed his eighteenth year, he was sent to the university of St Andrews to attend the prelections of John Mair, or Major, who at that time, according to his celebrated pupil, " taught logic, or, more properly, the art of sophistry," in St Salvntor's col- lege. Buchanan's eldest brother, Patrick, was matriculated at the same time. Having continued one session at St Andrews, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, on the 3d of October, 1525, being then, as appears from the college registers, a pauper or exhibitioner, he accompanied Major to France the following summer. Mackenzie says, that, on account of his great merits and at the same time his great poverty, Major sent for him, in 1524, and took him into his house as a servant, in which capacity it was that Buchanan went with him to Paris, and remained with him two years ; but this has been regarded by the vindicators of Buchanan as a story set forth for the purpose of fixing a charge of ingratitude upon the poet, for an epigram which he wrote upon one of Major's productions, and in which his old instructor is termed " solo cogno- mine major." On returning to France, Buchanan became a student in the Scots college of Paris, and in March was incorporated a bachelor of Arts the degree of Master of Arts he received in April, 1528. In June the following year he was elected procurator for the German nation, one of the four classes, into which the stu- dents were divided, and which included those from Scotland. The principles of the Reformation were by this time widely extended on the continent, and every where excited the most eager discussion. Upon Buchanan's ardent and gen- erous mind they made a powerful impression, and it was not in his nature to con- ceal it. Yet he seems to have acted with considerable caution, and was in no haste to renounce the established forms of worship, whence we conclude that the reported mortifications he is said to have met with at this time and on that account, are without foundation. At the end of two years he was elected a professor in the college of St Barbe, where he taught grammar three years ; and, if we may believe himself, his remuneration was such as to render his circumstances at least comparatively comfortable. It appears to have been in 1529, that this office was conferred upon him ; he was consequently only in his twenty-third year. Soon after entering on his j rofessorship, Buchanan attracted the notice of Gilbert Kennedy, earl of Cassillis, then residing in Paris, whither he had been sent to prosecute his studies, as the Scottish nobility at that period generally were ; and at the end of three years Buchanan was engaged to devote his time entirely to the care of the young Earl's education. With this nobleman he resided as a preceptor for five years ; and to him, as " a youth of promising talents and ex- cellent disposition," he inscribed his first published work, a translation of Lin- arre's rudiments of Latin grammar, which was printed by the learned Robert Stephens, in 1533. In 1536, James V. made a matrimonial excursion to France, where he found the earl of Cassillis, who had just finished his education. James having, on the 1st of January, 1537, married Magdalene, daughter of Francis I., returned to Scotland in May, bringing with him Cassillis and George Buchanan. This ac- counts for the future intimacy between the Litter person and the king, which in the end was like to have had a tragical termination. The connexion be- tween Buchanan and the earl seems, however, not to have been immediately dis- solved ; for it was while residing at the house of his pupil, that the poet com- posed Somnium or the Dream, apparently an imitation of a poem of Dunbar's, 412 GEORGE BUCHANAN. entitled " How Duubar vvabdesyred to be ane frier," and a bitter satire upon the impudence and hypocrisy of the Franciscans. This piece of raillery excited the utmost hostility on the part of its objects, and to avoid their vengeance, which he had every reason to dread, Buchanan had determined to retire to Paris, where he hoped to be able to resume his former situation in the college of St Barbe. James V., however, took him under his protection, and retained him as pre- ceptor to his natural son James Stuart, not the prior of St Andrews, whose mo- ther was of the family of Mar, but one of the same baptismal name who held the abbacies of Melrose and Kelso, and whose mother was Elizabeth Schaw, of the family of Sauchie, and who died in the year 1548. James, who about this time was not satisfied with the conduct of the clergy, in regard to a conspiracy against his life, said to have been entered into by some of the.nobility, sent for Buchanan, and not aware that he had already rendered himself obnoxious to the Franciscans, command- ed him to write a satire against them. Wishing to gratify the king, and yet give as little additional ground of offence to the friars as possible, Buclianan wrote his Palinodia in two parts, a covert satire, which he hoped might afford no ground of open complaint to those against whom it was directed. The king, himself a poet coarse and licentious, did not at all relish this delicate kind of irony, and it wounded the ecclesiastics still more painfully than its predecessor the Somnium ; so that, as it usually happens in an attempt to please one party without offending the other, the poet's labour proved vain. Finding it impos- sible to propitiate the friars, and the king still insisting upon their vices being fully and fairly exposed, he at last gave full scope to his indignation at the im- pudence, ignorance, impiety, and sensuality that distinguished the whole order, almost without an individual exception, in his poem entitled " Franciscauus," one of the most pungent satires to be found in any Language. In this composition Buchanan had little occasion to exercise his fancy, facts were so abundant He had but to embody in flowing Language, what was passing before all men's eyes, and depict the clergy as the most contemptible and the most depraved of human beings, who, besides being robl/ers of the poor, lived, the far greater part of them, in the open and avowed practice of the most loathsome debauchery. Still they were the most powerful body in the state ; and after the death of Magdalene, who liad been bred under her aunt, the queen of Navarre, a protestant, and was friend- ly to the cause, they gained an entire ascendancy over the too facile King, who had not the grace to protect the tutor of his son from the effects of their rage, occasioned by poems that had been written at his own express command. Towards the end of the year 1538, measures were taken for the total suppres- sion of the new opinions, and in February following, five persons were commit- ted to the flames ; nine saved their lives by burning their bills, as it was called, or in other words recanting. Among the rest George Buchanan was on this occa- sion seized, and to secure ample vengeance upon him, Cardinal Beaton offered the king a sum of money for his life ; a piece of supererogatory wickedness, for which there was not the smallest occasion, as the prejudices of his judges would infallibly have secured his condemnation, had he been brought before any of their tribunals ; but aware of the mortal enmity of his accusers, he fled into England. By the way he happily escaped a pestilential distemper, which was at that time desolating the north of England, and when he arrived in London, experienced the protection of an English knight, Sir John Rainsford, who both supplied his immediate necessities, and protected him from the fury of the pa- pists, to whom he was now every where obnoxious. On this occasion it was that he addressed himself to Henry VIII. and to his minister Cromwell, both of whom treated him with neglect. Several of his little pieces written at this time attest the straits to which he was reduced, England at that period liud few at- GEORGE BUCHANAN. 4J3 tractions tor a Scotsman ; and it must have been peculiarly galling to the lofty spirit of Buchanan, after stooping to solicit patronage among the natural ene- mies of his country, to find his efforts despised, and his necessities disregarded. Meeting with so little encouragement there, he passed over to Paris, where he was well known, and had many acquaintances. But here to his dismay lie found Cardinal Beaton resident as ambassador from the Scottish court. This circum- stance rendered it extremely unsafe for him to remain ; happily he was invited to Bourdeaux by Andrew Goven, a Portuguese, principal of the college of Guienne, lately founded in that city, through whose interest he was appointed professor of humanity in that afterwards highly famed seminary. Here Buchanan remained for three years, during which he completed four Tragedies, besides composing a number of poems on miscellaneous subjects. He was all this while the object of the unwearied enmity of Cardinal Beaton and the Franciscans, who still threatened his life. The Cardinal at one time wrote to the bishop of Bourdeaux, commanding him to secure the person of the heretical poet, which might perhaps have been done ; but the letter falling into the hands of one of the poet's friends, was detained till the appearance of a pestilence in Guienne absorbed every lesser concern. The death of James V. following soon after, with the distractions consequent on that event, gave the Cardinal more than enough to do at home without taking cognizance of heretics abroad. Among his pupils at Bourdeaux, Buclianan numbered the celebrated Michael de Mon- tague, who was an actor in every one of his dramas ; and among his friends were not only his fellow professors, but all the men of literature and science in the city and neighbourhood. One of the most illustrious of these was the elder Scaliger, who resided and practised as a physician at Agin ; at his house Buch- anan and the other professors used to spend part of their vacations. Here they were hospitably entertained, and in their society Scaliger seems not only to have forgot, as he himself acknowledges, the tortures of the gout, but, what was more extraordinary, his natural talent for contradiction. The many ex- cellent qualities of this eminent scholar, and the grateful recollection of his conversational talents, Buchanan has preserved in an elegant Latin Epi- gram, apparently written at the time when he was about to quit this seat of the muses, to enter upon new scenes of difficulty and danger. The younger Scaliger was but a boy when Buchanan visited at his father's house ; but he inherited all his father's admiration of the Scottish poet, whom he declared to be decidedly superior to all the Latin poets of those times. After having resided three "years at Bourdeaux, and conferred lustre upon its University by the splendour of his talents, Buchanan removed, for reasons which we are not acquainted with, to Paris; and in L544, we find him one of the regents in the college of Cardinal le Moire, which station he seems to have held till 1547. There he had for his associates, among other highly respectable names, the cele- brated Turnebus and Muretus. By a Latin elegy addressed to his late colleagues Tastoeus and Tevius, we learn that about this period he had a severe attach the gout, and that he had been under the medical care of Carolus Stephanus, who was a doctor of physic of the faculty of Paris, and, like several of 1 tions, was equally distinguished as a scholar and as a printer. In the i elegy, Buchanan commemorates the kindness of his colleagues, particuJi Gelida, an amiable and learned Spaniard, less eminent for talents than J chanan's other colleagues, Turnebus and Muretus, but as a man of worth and excellence, at least equal to the former and vastly superior t , latter, who, though a man of splendid talents, was worthless in the ext To Muretus, Buchanan addressed a copy of verses on a Tragedy **"^* in his youth entitled Julius Casar ; but Muretus had not as yet put forth tl 414 GEORGE BUCIIANAV. monstrosities of charactei, that ought long ago to have buried his name in oblivion. 1 In the year 1517 Buchanan again shifted his place, and, along with his Port-.i- jnriiese friend, Andrew Govea, passed into Portugal. Govea, with two brothers, had been sent for his education into France, by John III. of Portugal, who havhm now founded the university of Coimbra, recalled him to take the principal superintendence of the infant establishment. Aware, cat the same time, that his whole kingdom could not furnish a sufficiency of learned men to fill the various chairs, his majesty commissioned Govea to bring a number of learned men with him for that purpose. The persons selected were George Buchanan, his elder brother Patrick, Gruchius, Gerunta?us, Tevius, and Vinetus, all of whom liad already distinguished themselves by the publication of learned works. Ar- noldus Fabricius, John Costa, and Anthony Mendez, the two latter natives of Portugal, completed the establishment, .and all of them, Patrick Buchanan and Fabricius excepted, had, under Govea, been teachers in the college of Guienne. France, at this period, threatened to be the scene of great convulsions, and Buchanan regarded this retirement to Portugal as an exceedingly fortunate circumstance, and for a short time his expectations were fully realized. Govea, however, died in less than a twelvemonth, and, deprived of his protection, the poor professors soon found themselves exposed to the jealousy of the natives on account of being foreigners, and to the unrelenting bigotry of the priests because they were scholars. Three of their number were very soon immured in the dungeons of the inquisition, and, after a tedious confinement, brought before that tribunal, which, unable to convict them of any crime, overwhelmed them with reproaches, and remanded them to their dungeons, without permitting them so much as to know who were their accusers. Buchanan did not escape his share of this persecution. Franciscanus was again revived against him, though the inquisitors knew nothing of that poem; for he had never parted with a copy, save that which he gave to his own king, James V., and he had taken care to have the whol%atiair properly explained to the Portuguese monarch before he set foot in his dominions. He was also charged with eating flesh in Lent, a practice quite common in Portugal at that time, and with having asserted that Augustine's opinion of the Eucharist coincided with the protestant rather than with the Romish views on the subject, and two witnesses were found to declare that he was an enemy to the Roman faith. More merciful than on many other occasions, the inquisition, after dealing with Buchanan for upwards of a year and a half, sentenced him to be confined in a monastery for some months, that he might by the inmates be better instructed in the principles and practice of religion. Fortunately, the monks to whose care Buchanan was thus con- signed were not without humanity, though he found them utterly ignorant of religion ; and he consoled himself by planning, and in part executing, his un- rivalled paraphrase of the Psalms of David, which placed him immeasurably above all modern Latin poets, and will transmit his name with honour and admiration to the latest posterity. That this was a task imposed upon him by his ghostly guardians, is an idle tale totally devoid of foundation. The probability is that the poor monks were incapable of appreciating his labours, but he seems to have gained their good will, for he was restored to his liberty, and soliciting the king's permission to return to France, was requested to remain, and pre- 1 Of Muretus's impious book, De Tribus ImpostorUm*, or the three impostors, Moses, Je- sus, and Mahomet, a late biographer of Buchanan has s^iU " it is extremely evident tha* such a book never existed." We are informed, however, that a copy exists in the MS. col lection of the University of Glasgow. GEORGE BUCHANAN. 415 sented with a small sum of money for subsistence till a situation worthy of liis talents should be found. After having suffered so much from the inquisition, Buchanan could not be very ambitious of Portuguese preferment, and the promise of the king not being likely to be hastily fulfilled, he embarked in a Greek vessel at Lisbon and Killed for England. To England, however, he certainly liad no partiality ; and though Edward VI. was now on the throne, and doing all he could to advance the work of reformation, and though some very advantageous offers were made to induce him to settle in that country, he proceeded direct to France, where he arrived in the beginning of 1553. It was at this time that Buchanan wrote his poem, Adventus in Galliam, in which his contempt and resentment of the Portuguese, and the treatment he had received, together with his affection for the French nation, are strongly expressed. Perhaps it would be too much to say that the French nation was attached to Buchanan, but many individuals of it certainly were, and immediately on his arrival in Paris he was appointed to a regency in the college of Boncourt In this station he remained till 1555, when he was engaged by the celebrated Coiute de Brissac, to act as domestic tutor to his son, Tinioleon de Gosse. To this nobleman he had addressed a poetical tribute after the capture of Vercelli, an event which occurred in September, 1553; and to him also he dedicated his tragedy oi Jepthes in the summer of 1554. The Comte, who seems not to have been insensible to this species of flattery, next year called the poet into Italy, where he himself presided over the French dominions, and charged him with the education of his son. Though much of his time had been spent amidst the tumults of war, the Marshal de Brissac was a man of a liberal mind, who, living in a state of princely magnificence, cultivated an acquaintance with the most eminent scholars. During his campaigns he had often been accompanied by men of learning, and had the discernment to discover in the preceptor of his son, powers of mind equal to any station in society. He therefore treated him with the utmost deference, often placing him at the council board among Ins principal officers, and on the most important occasions thought it no discredit to take the benefit of his superior sagacity. When committed to the tuition ot Buchanan, Tinioleon de Cosse was only twelve years of age, and he parted with him at the age of seventeen. He was afterwards distinguished for his bravery, for his acquaintance with military science, and his literary attainments were such as reflected honour on a young nobleman destined for the profession of arms. His short but brilliant career terminated at the siege of Mucidan, where he fell by a musket ball, aged only twenty-six years. During the five years of his connexion with this illustrious family, Buchanan's residence was alternately in France and Italy, and as his pupil was destined to the profession of arms, and had different masters to attend him, he found leisure for prosecuting his poetical studies, and formed the design, and composed part of his philosophical poem De Sphera, which he addressed to his pupil. His future avocations prevented him from completing this poem. He likewise published the first specimen ot his version of the Psalms, an: 1 , his translation of the Alcestes of Euripides, which he inscribed to Margaret, daughter of Francis I., a munificent princess, aft wards married to the Duke of Savoy. His ode on the surrender of Calais w also composed while in Brissac's family. But much of his spare time was employed in a manner still more important in examining the grounds religious belief, and settling to liis own satisfaction the great question (t ever since, more or less, agitated Europe) between the Romish and the reform* churches. That he had all along inclined to the side of the reformed, is n putable ; but he had never relinquished his connexion with the ancient church, 416 GEORGE BUCHANAN. which he had probably thought still right in the ninin, though disfigured and disgraced by the figments and the follies of an ignorant and corrupt priesthood. The result of this examination, however, was a perfect conviction that many of the Romish doctrines were erroneous ; that the worship was idolatrous ; and the discipline utterly depraved and perverted; and, consequently, that the necessity of separation from this church was imperative upon all who had any regard to the Word of God and the salvation of their own souls : and no sooner did he arrive in Scotland than he acted accordingly. As Buchanan's connexion with the Marshal do Brissac terminated in 1500, when the civil wars in France had already begun, he probably returned im- mediately to Scotland, though the exact period lias not been ascertained. He had courted, while he resided in France, the notice of Mary, by an Epi- tlialamium on her marriage with the Dauphin; and in January, 1501-2, we find Randolph, the English ambassador, writing thus from Edinburgh to his employers : " Ther is with the quene [Mary] one called George 1'owhanan a Scottishe man very well learned, tliat was Schollemaster unto Mons r- de Brissack's son, very Godlye and honest," And in a subsequent letter, dated from St Andrews, he says, " the quene readeth daylie after her dinner, instructed by a learned man, Mr George Bowhanan, somewhat of Livy." Mary liad been sent to France in the sixth year of her age, and her education had in some respecis been carefully attended to. She spoke Scottish and French, as if both IL; the see of Salisbury. At the close of the Session of parliament 1689, Dr Buraet went down to his dio-. cese, when he entered upon the duties of his episcopal office with that conscien- tious ardour which distinguished his character. His first pastoral letter, how- ever in which, to save betraying the discrepancies of his political creed, he found- ed kinw William's right to the throne upon conquest, gave so much offence to both houses of parliament, that they ordered it to be burnt by the hands of the liano-man. He maintained, nevertheless, unshaken credit with king William and queen Mary to the end of their days ; and employed that credit in the most praise-worthy manner. He was by the king, in preference to all his min- isters, appointed to name the princess Sophia, Electress of Brunswick, next in succession to the princess of Denmark, and her issue, in the famous bill for de- claring the rights and liberties of the subject, and settling tlie succession to the crown"; and when that succession was explicitly established in 1701, he had the honour of being chairman of the committee to which the bill was referred. He had also the pleasure in 1690, of being a successful advocate for Lord Clarendon, who had engaged in a plot against the king, and been one of the Dr's bitterest enemies, at the time when popery and arbitrary power were in favour. During the life of Mary, Dr Burnet being generally one of her advi; the affairs of the church passed wholly through his hands. After her death, in ! 694, a commission was granted for that purpose to the two archbishops and four prelates, of whom Dr Burnet was one. A commission of the same kind WBS aranted in 1700, and the Doctor still continued a member. In 1698, he was appointed preceptor to the Duke of Gloucester, and, on that occasion, insisted on giving up his bishopric. King William, however, would not allow him to do so- but in order to soothe him, made arrangements that he might be at hand, and still liave it in his power to pay considerable attention to his diocese, this high trust the bishop conducted himself so as to have the enUre approbation of the princess of Denmark, who ever after retained a peculiar affection for him, of which he had many sensible tokens after she came to the throne ; though in her last years he was in direct and open opposition to her measures. In year 1699, he published his celebrated exposition * *S*" ** and a short time before his death, a third volume of h History of the Reform* 436 GILBERT BUHNET. tion. In the month of March, 1715, he was attacked with a pleuritic fever, which carried him off, being in the seventy-second year of his age. He was married first to the Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter to the Earl of Cassillis, celebrated for her beauty and her wit. Secondly, to 3Irs 3Iary Scott, a Dutch lady of noble extraction and large fortune, by whom he had three sons. Thirdly, to Mrs Berkeley, a widow lady of singular talents and uncommon piety, by whom he had no issue. From the brief sketch which we have given of the principal events of his life, it is evident that Dr Burnet possessed a vigorous un- derstanding, and was a man of great piety, and unwearied perseverance. Early prepossessions, however, which, vigorous as his understanding was, he evidently could not overcome, made htm the dupe of a system antiscriptural and supersti- tious a system which whatever it may seem to promise in theory, lias in prac- tice been found cumbersome and inefficient a system which, while it provides for the pampering of a few of the privileged orders of the clergy, leaves all the rest, together with the great body of the people, to pine and perish in want, con- tempt, and ignorance. What man as a bishop could do, Dr Burnet, while bishop of Salisbury, appears to have done ; but he was hampered on all hands by insur- mountable abuses originally inherent, or growing naturally out of the legalised order of things. His consistorial court he found to have become a grievance both to clergy and laity, and he attended for years in person to correct it. But the time foundation of complaint he found to be the dilatory course of pro- ceedings, and the exorbitant fees, which he had no authority to correct. He could not even discharge poor suitors who Mere oppressed with vexatious prose- cutions, otherwise than by paying their fees out of his own pocket, which he fre- quently did, and this was all the reform he was able to accomplish. In admit- ting to orders, he met with so much ignorance and thoughtless levity, that for the benefit of the church he formed a nursery at Salisbury, under his own eye, for students of divinity, to the number of ten, to each of whom he allowed a sum of money out of his own income for his subsistence, and in this way he reared up several young men who became eminent in the church ; but this was soon disco- vered to be a designed affront put upon the method of education followed at Ox- ford, and he was compelled to give it up. Pluralities he exclaimed against as sacrilegious robbery, and in his first visitation at Salisbury quoted St Bernard, who, being consulted by a priest, whether he might not accept of two benefices, replied, ' And how will you be able to serve them.' ' I intend,' said the priest, ' to officiate in one of them by deputy.' ' Will your deputy be damned for you too,' said the saint ; ' believe me, you may serve your cure by proxy, but you must be damned in person.' This quotation so afiected one of his hearers, 3Ir Kilsey, that he resigned the rectory of Bemerton, worth two hundred pounds a year, which he held along with one of still greater value. The bishop was, at the same time, from the poverty of the living, frequently under the necessity of joining two of them together to have them served at all, and sometimes he found it necessary to help the incumbent out of his own pocket into the bargain. These, with other evils, it must be admitted, the Doctor lost no opportunity to attempt having redressed, but alas ! they were and are inherent in the system, without a reform in which, they admit of no cure. He travelled over his diocese which he found " ignorant to scandal," catechising and confirming with the zeal of an apostle ; and when he attended his duty in parliament, he preached in some of the London churches every Sabbath morning, and in the evening lec- tured in his own house, where a number of persons of distinction attended. So much conscientious diligence, confined to a legitimate locality, could scarcely have failed to produce a rich harvest of gospel fruits. Scattered as it was over such a wide surface, there is reason to fear that it was in a great measure unpro- .TAMES BURNET. 437 fitable. While Dr Burnet was a diligent instructor from the pulpit, he was not less so from the press, having published in his life-time fifty-eight single sermons, thirteen treatises or tracts on divinity, seventeen upon popery, twenty-six politi- cal and miscellaneous, and twenty-four historical and biographical, to which we may add the History of his Own Time, published since his death. Some of these, particularly the Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, the History of the Refor- mation, and of his own times, still are, and must long continue to be, especially the latter, standard works. The History of his Own Time, it has been happily observed, has received the best testimony to its worth from its having given equr.l offence to the bigoted and interested of all parties. Take him all in all, per haps no juster eulogium has been passed upon him than that of Wodrow, who, speaking of him as one of Leighton's preachers, calls him " Mr Gilbert Burnet, well known to the world since, first professor of Divinity at Glasgow, and after that persecuted, for his appearing against popery, and for the cause of liberty, and since the Revolution the learned and moderate bishop of Sarum, one of the great eye-sores of the high-fliers and tories of England, and a very great orna- ment to his native country." BURNET, JAMES, better known by his judicial designation of Lord Mon- boddo, was born at Monboddo, in Kincardineshire, in the year 1714. He was eldest surviving son of James Burnet, by Elizabeth Forbes, only sister to Sir Arthur Forbes of Craigievar, Baronet. For what reason is not known, but, in- stead of being sent to a public school, he was educated at home, under the care of Dr Francis Skene, afterwards professor of philosophy at the Marischal Col- lege, Aberdeen. This gentleman discharged his duty to his pupil with the ut- most faithfulness, and succeeded in inspiring him with a taste for ancient litera- ture. He was the first that introduced him to an acquaintance with the philosophy of the ancients, of which Mr Burnet became so enthusiastic an admirer. Dr Skene, being promoted to a professorship, was the more immediate cause of his pupil accompanying him to Aberdeen, and of his being educated at the Maris- chal College in that city. It is probable that he lodged with his preceptor, who of course would direct and superintend his studies. Dr Skene was a professor in that seminary for the long period of forty-one years, and was universally ac- knowledged to be one of the most diligent and laborious teachers that ever held the honourable office. What contributed, in a great degree, to fix Mr Burnet's attention upon tl literature and philosophy of the Greeks, was not only the instructions he had re- ceived at home from his tutor, but that, when he entered the university, Principal Blackwell had for several years been professor of Greek. This person was the great means of reviving the study of this noble language in the north of Scot- land and one of his greatest admirers, and zealous imitators in the prosecution of Grecian learning, was Mr Burnet, Esteeming the philosophical works trans- mitted to us by the Romans as only copies, or borrowed from the Greeks, he determined to have recourse to the fountain head. Burnet was naturally a man . very keen passions, of an independent tone of thinking, and whatever ^opm he once espoused, he was neither ashamed nor afraid to avow it openly. U dreaded no consequences, neither did he regard the opinions of others, had the authority of Plato or Aristotle, he was quite satisfied, and how par doxical soever the sentiment might be, or contrary to what was popular or ge ally received, he did not in the least regard. Revolutions of vanous kinds oeginning to be introduced into the schools; but these he either neglect despised. The Newtonian philosophy in particular had begun to attrac a tion,and public lecturers upon its leading doctrmes had been es*bb h almost all the British universities ; but their very novelty was a sufficient reason 438 JAMES BURNET. for his neglecting them. The laws by which the material \vorld is regulated, were considered by him as of vastly inferior importance to what regarded mind, and its diversified operations. To the contemplation of the latter, therefore, his chief study was directed. Having been early designed for the Scottish bar, he wisely resolved to lay a good foundation, and to suffer nothing to interfere with what was now to be the main business of iiis life. To obtain eminence in the profession of the law , de- pends less upon contingencies, than in any of the other learned professions. Wealth, splendid connections, and circumstan<;es merely casual, have brought for- ward many physicians and divines, who had nothing else to recommend them. But though these may be excellent subsidiaries, they are not sufficient of them- selves to constitute a distinguished lawyer. Besides good natural abilities, the mos: severe application, and uncommon diligence in the acquisition of extensive legal knowledge, are absolutely necessary. At every step the neophyte is obliged to make trial of his strength with his opponents, and us the public are seldom in a mistake for any length of time, where their interests are materially con- cerned, his station is very soon fixed. 'Hie intimate connection that subsists between the civil or Roman law, and the law of Scotland, is well known. The one is founded upon the other. According to the custom of Scotland at that time, Burnet repaired to Holland, where the best masters in this study were then settled. At the university of Groningen he remained for three years, assiduously attending the lectures on the civil law. lie then returned to his native country so perfectly accomplished as a civilian, that, during the course of a long life, his opinions on difficult points of this law were highly respected. He happened to arrive in Edinburgh from Holland on the night of Porteous' mob. His lodgings were in the Lawnmarket, in the vicinity of the Tolboolh, and hearing a great noise in the street, from a motive of curiosity he sallied forth to witness the scene. Some person, however, had recognised him, and it was currently reported that he was one of the ringleaders. He was likely to have been put to some trouble on this account, had he not been able to prove that he had just arrived from abroad, and therefore could know no- thing of what was in agitation. He was wont to relate with great spirit the circumstances that attended this singular transaction. In 1737, he became a member of the Faculty of Advocates, and in process of time came into considerable practice. His chief patrons in early life, were lord justice clerk 31ilton, lord president Forbes, and Erskine lord Timvald, or Alva. The last had been a professor in the university of Edinburgh, and being an excellent Greek scholar, knew how to estimate his talents. During the rebellion of 1745, Burnet went to London, and prudently de- clining to take any part in the politics of that troublous period, he spent the time chiefly in the company and conversation of his literary friends. Among these were Thomson the poet, lord Littleton, and Dr Armstrong. \Vlien peace was restored, he returned to Scotland. About 1760, he married a beautiful and accomplished lady, Miss Farquharson, a relation of Marischal Keith, by whom he had a sou and two daughters. What first brought him into very pro- minent notice, was the share he had in conducting the celebrated Douglas' cause. No question ever came before a court of law, which interested the pub- lic to a greater degree. In Scotland it became in a manner a national question, for the whole country was divided, and ranged on one side or the other. Mr Burnet was counsel for Mr Douglas, and went thrice to France to assist in lead- ing the proof taken there. This he was well qualified to do, for, during his studies in Holland, he had acquired the practice of speaking the French lan- guage with great facility. Such interest did this cause excite, that the pleadings JAMES BURNET. 439 before the court of session lasted thirty-one days, and the most eminent lawyer* were engaged. It is a curious historical fact, that almost all the lawyers on both sides were afterwards raised to the bench. Mr Burnet was, in 17G4, made sheriff of his native county, and on the 12th February, 1767, through the inte- rest of the Duke of Queensberry, lord justice general, he succeeded Lord Mil- ton as a lord of session, under the title of Lord Monboddo. It is said that he refused a justiciary gown, being unwilling that his studies should be interrupted, during the vacation, by any additional engagements. The first work which he published was on the Origin and Progress of Lan- guage. The first volume appeared in 1771, the second in 1773, and the third in 1776. This treatise attracted a great deal of attention on account of the singularity of some of the doctrines which it advanced. In the first part, he gives a very learned, elaborate, and abstruse account of the origin of ideas, ac- cording to the metaphysics of Plato and the commentators en Aristotle, philoso- phers to whose writings and theories he was devotedly attached. He then treats of the origin of human society and of language, which he considers as a human invention, without paying the least regard to the scriptural accounts. He repre- sents men as having originally been, and continued for many ages to be, no better than beasts, and indeed in many respects worse; as destitute of speech, of reason, of conscience, of social affection, and of every thing that can confer dignity upon a creature, and possessed of nothing but external sense and memory, and a capacity of improvement. The system is not a new one, being borrowed from Lucretius, of whose account of it, Horace gives an exact abridg- ment in these lines : " Cum prorepserunt primis animalia ten-is, mutum et turpe pecus,'' &c. which Lord Monboddo takes for his motto, and which, he said, comprehended in miniature the whole history of man. In regard to facts that make for his system he is amazingly credulous, but blind and sceptical in regard to every thing of an opposite tendency. He asserts with the utmost gravity and confidence, that the oran-outangs are of the human species that in the bay of Bengal, there exists a nation of human creatures with tails, discovered on hundred and thirty years before by a Swedish skipper that the beavers and sea-cats are social and political animals, though man, by nature, is neither social nor political, nor even rational reason, reflection, a sense of right and wrong, society, policy, and even thought, being, in the human species, as much the effects of art, contrivance, and long experience, as writing, ship-building, or any other manufacture. Notwithstanding that the work contains these and many other strange and whimsical opinions, yet it discovers great acuteness of remark. His greatest work, which he called " Ancient Metaphysics," consists of thre< volumes 4to., the List of which was published only a few weeks before t author's death. It may be considered as an exposition and defence of the < cian philosophy in opposition to the philosophical system of Sir Isaac P on, and the scepticism of modern metaphysicians, particularly Mr David His opinions upon many points coincide with those of Mr Harris, the author Hermes, who uas his intimate friend, and of whom he was a great admirer. tf < never seems to have understood, nor to have entered into the spirit of I Ionian philosophy; and, as to Mr Hume, he, without any disguise, ace of atheism, and reprobates in the most severe terms some of his opinions. In domestic circumstances Monboddo was particularly unfortunate, a very beautiful woman, died in child-bed. His son, a promising boy in who education he took great delight, was likewise snatched irom his affections by a premature death ; and his second daughter, in personal loveliness one of tl women of the age, was cut off by consumption, when only twenty-five years old. 4-tO KOBE'RT BURNS. Bui us, in an address to Edinburgh, thus celebrates the beauty and excellence <1 Miss Burnet : " Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn, Gay as the gilded summer sky, Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn, Dear as the raptured thrill of joy! Fair Burnet strikes the adoring eye, Heaven's beauties on my fancy shine ; I see the Sire of lore on high, And own his work indeed divine." His eldest daughter was married to Kirkpatrick Williamson, Esq. Lite keeper of the outer house rolls, who liad been clerk to his lordship, and was eminent as a Greek scholar. About 1780, he first began to make an annual journey to London, which he continued for a good many years, indeed, till he was upwards of eighty years of age. As a carriage was not a vehicle in use among the ancients, he deter- mined never to enter and be seated in what he termed a box. He esteemed it as degrading to the dignity of human nature to be dragged at the tails of horses instead of being mounted on their backs. In his journeys between Edinburgh and London he therefore rode on horseback, attended by a single servant. On his last visit, he was taken ill on the road, and it was with difficulty that Sir Hector Monroe prevailed upon him to come into his carnage. He set out, how- ever, next day on horseback, and arrived safe in Edinburgh by slow journeys. Lord Monboddo being in London in 1785, visited the King's bench, when some part of the fixtures of the place giving way, a great scatter took place among the lawyers, and the very judges themselves rushed towards the door. Monboddo, somewhat near-sighted, and rather dull of hearing, sat still, and was the only man who did so. Being asked why he had not bestirred himself to avoid the ruin, he coolly answered, that he " thought it was an annual ceremony, with which, being an alien, he had nothing to do." When in the country he generally dressed in the style of a plain farmer ; and lived among his tenants with the utmost familiarity, and treated them with greal kindness. He used much the exercises of walking in the open air, and ol riding. He had accustomed himself to the use of the cold bath in all seasons, and amid every severity of the weather. It is said that he even made use of the air bath, or occasionally walking about for some minutes naked in a room filled with fresh and cool air. In imitation of the ancients, the practice o/ anointing was not forgotten. The lotion lie used was not the oil of the ancien is. but a saponacious liquid compound of rose water, olive oil, saline aromatic spirit, and Venice soap, which, when well mixed, i-esembles cream. This he applied at bed-time, before a large fire, after coming from the warm bath. This learned and ingenious, though somewhat eccentric, man died upon the 26th May, 1799, at the advanced age of eighty-five years. BURNS, ROBERT, a celebrated poet, was born January 25, 1759 ; died July 22, 1796. Of this illustrious genius I originally intended to have compiled an account, from the materials that have been already published, adding such new facts as have come in my way. But, having been much struck with the felicity of a narrative written by the unfortunate Robert Heron which nearly answer.' my purpose as to length, and contains many fresh and striking views of the various situations in which the poet was placed in life, together with, what ap pears to me, a comprehensive and most eloquent estimate of his genius I have been induced to prefer it to anything of my own. By this course I shall revive a very rare and interesting composition, which is often quoted, but seldom see n T (BURNS ROBERT BURNS. and present to the reader, not only an uncommonly clear view of the life and character of Burns, but also a specimen of the animated and nervous, though somewhat turgid, style of Heron, whose literary history is scarcely less remarka- ble than that of the Ayrshire bard. The reader will find the text occasionally corrected and illustrated by notes, as also a short poetical relique of Burns, which first appeared in the original edition of this work. Robert Burns was a native of Ayrshire, one of the western counties of Scot- land. 1 He was the son of humble parents ; and his father passed through life in the condition of a hired labourer, or of a small fanner. 2 Even in this situation, however, it was not hard for him to send his children to the parish school, to receive the ordinary instructions in reading, writing, arithmetic, and the principles of religion. By this course of education, young Robert pro- fited to a degree that might have encouraged his friends to destine him to one of the liberal professions, had not his father's poverty made it necessary to re- move him from school, as soon as he had grown up, to earn for himself the means of support, as a hired plough-boy, or shepherd. 3 The establishment of parish schools, but for which, perhaps, the infant enei<- gies of this young genius might never have received that first impulse, by which .alone they were to be excited into action, is one of the most beneficial that have ever been instituted in this country ; and one which, I believe, is no where so firmly fixed, or extended so completely throughout a whole kingdom, as in Scot- land. Here, every parish has a schoolmaster, almost as invariably as it has a clergyman. For a sum, rarely exceeding twenty pounds, in salary and fees, this pei-son instructs the children of the parish in reading, writing, arithmetic, book- keeping, Latin, and (jreek. The schoolmasters are generally students in phil- osophy or theology ; and hence, the establishment of the parish schools, beside its direct utilities, possesses also the accidental advantage of furnishing an excel- lent school of future candidates for the office of parochial clergymen. So small are the fees for teaching, that no parents, however poor, can want the means to give their children, at least such education at school, as young Burns received. From the spring labours of a plough-boy, from the summer employment of a i He was born in a clay-built cottage, about two miles to the south of the town of Ayr, within tue abrogated parish of Aliowa;, , and in the immediate vicinity of the ruined church or' that parish, which he has immortalized in his Tarn u' Shanter. * His father, William Burness for so he always spelt his name was the son of a la ner in Kincardineshire, and iwd removed from that county to Ayrshire, at nineteen years ae in consequence of domestic embarrassments. Some collateral relations of J respectable station in society at Montrose. William Burness was one of those inteU ent, thoughtful, and virtuous characters who have contributed to raise the reputation of tl sot- tish peasantry to its present lofty height. From him the poet derived an immense ston knowledge, uii habitual feeling of piety, and, vrlr.it will astonish most of all, great acquamfc with the wurid and the way* of mankind. After supporting himself for /F* dcn.r to -Air Ferguson of Doonholm, the father tooK a small tarm (Mount Oiiphant) tioi that gentleman, to which he removed when the poet was between six and seven ; He subsequently removed to the farm of Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton, where he died, in 1781, in verv embarrassed circumstances. sh The mother bf Burns was Agnes Brown, the daughter of a race of Ayrslure peasant*. B survived her son about thirty years, and died at an advanced age. Fn _ H , h wr i t i,, ff 3 The circumstances of Burns' education are well *"*** *&?$& arithmetic, a little mathematics, some Latin, and a smattei ing ot in his earlv years to obtain a perusal of many English classical works, an y - , , ,* * . i _ i_ i*,u Urt .-.,rl .."it- *lio "Xinit fit r t'CMI] el-,t,ment in the text as to his having become a hired plough-boy, does not receive e,, confirmation from any other source, and is probably mcor O K. 442 ROBERT BURNS. shepherd, tiie peasant youth often returns, for a few months, eagerly to pursue his education at the parish school. It was so with Burns ; he returned from labour to learning, and from learning went again to labour, till his mind began to open to the charms of taste and knowledge ; till he began to feel a passion for books, and for the subjects of books, which was to give a colour to the whole thread of his future lii'e. On nature he soon began to gaze with new discernment, and with new enthusiasm : his mind's eye opened to perceive affecting beauty and sublimity, where, by the mere gross peasant there was nought to be seen but water, earth, and sky, but animals, plants, and soil ; even as the eyes of the servant of Elisha were sud- denly enlightened to behold his master and himself guarded from the Syrian bands, by horses and chariots of fire, to all but themselves invisible. What might, perhaps, first contribute to dispose his mind to poetical efforts, is one particular in the devotional piety of the Scottish peasantry ; it is still com- mon for them to make their children get by heart the Psalms of David, in that version of homely rhymes, which is used in their churches. In the morning, and in the evening of every day, or, at least in the evening of every Saturday and Sun- day, these psalms are sungin solemn family devotion, a chapter of the Bible is read, and extemporary prayer is fervently uttered. 4 The whole books of tlie sacred Scriptures are thus continually in the hands of almost every peasant. And it is impossible that some souls should not occasionally be awakened among them to the divine emotions of genius, by that rich assemblage, which those books pre- sent, of almost all that is interesting in incident, or picturesque in imagery, or aftectingly sublime, or tender in sentiments or character. It is impossible that those rude rhymes, and the simple artless music with which they are accom- panied, should not occasionally excite some ear to a taste for the melody of verse. That Burns had felt these impulses, will appear undeniably certain to whoever shall carefully peruse his Cottar's Saturday Night ; or shall remark, with nice observation, the various fragments of scripture sentiment, of scripture imagery, of scripture language, which are scattered throughout his works. Still more interesting to the young peasantry, are the ancient ballads of l.ve and war, of which a great number are yet popularly known and sung in Scot- land. While the prevalence of the Gaelic language in the northern parts of this country, excluded from those regions the old Anglo-Saxon songs and minstrels; these songs and minstrels were, in the meaniime, driven by the Norman conquests and establishments, out of the southern counties of England ; and were forced to wander, in exile, beyond its northern confine, into the southern districts of the Scottish kingdom. Henee in the old English songs, is every famous minstrel still related to have been of the north country, while, ou the contrary, in the old Scottish songs, it is always the south country, to which every favourite minstrel is said to belong. It is the same district to which both allude ; a district comprehending precisely the southern counties of Scotland, with the most northern counties of England. In the south of Scotland the best of those ballads are often sung by the rustic maid or matron at her spinning wheel. They are listened to with ravished ears, by old and young. Their rude melody; that mingled curiosity and awe, which are naturally excited by the very idea of their antiquity ; the exquisitely tender and natural complaints sometimes poured forth in them ; the gallant deeds of knightly heroism, which they sometimes celebrate ; their wild tales of demons, ghosts, and fairies, in wlicse existence superstition alone has believed ; the manners which they represent ; the obsolete, yet picturesque and expressive language, in which the) 4 William Burness looked upon his son Robert as the best reader in the house, and used to employ him to read the Bible to the rest. Scots M-ignzine, I?y7. ROBERT BURNS. 44.' are often clothed, give them wonderful power to transport every imagination .and every heart To the soul of Burns, they were like a happy breeze touch- ing the wires of an JEoIian harp, and calling forth the most ravishing melody. Beside all this, the Gentle Shepherd and the other poems of Allan Ramsay, have long been highly popular in Scotland. They fell early into the hands of Burns; and while the fond applause which they received, drew his emulation, they presented to him likewise treasures of phraseology, and models of versifica- tion. Ruddimnn's Weekly Magazine was during this time published ; was sup- ported chiefly by the original communications of correspondents, and found a very extensive sale. In it, Burns read the poetry of Robert Ferguson, wit ten chiefly in the Scottish dialect, and exhibiting many specimens of uncommon poetical excellence. The Seasons of Thomson, too, the Grave of Blair, the far-famed iilegy of Gray, the Paradise Lost of Milton, perhaps the Minstrel of Benttie, were so commonly read, even among those with whom Burns would naturally associate, that poetical curiosity, although even less ardent than his, could, in such circumstances, have little difficulty in procuring them. With such means to give his imagination a poetical bias, and to favour the culture of his taste and genius, Burns gradually became a poet, 1 He was not, however, one of those forward children, who, from a mistaken impulse, begin pre- maturely to write and to rhyme, and hence never attain to excellence. Conversing familiarly for a long while with the works of those poets who were known to him : contemplating the aspect of nature, in a district which exhibits an uncom- mon assemblage of the beautiful and the ruggedly grand, of the cultivated and the wild ; looking upon human life with an eye quick and keen to remark, as well the stronger and leading, as the nicer and subordinate features of character to discriminate the generous, the honourable, the manly, in conduct, from the ridiculous, the base, and the mean ; he was distinguished among his fellows for extraordinary intelligence, good sense, and penetration, long before others, or perhaps even himself, suspected him to be capable of writing verses. His mind was mature, and well stored with such knowledge as lay within his reach ; he had made himself master of powers of language, superior to those of almost any former writer in the Scottish dialect, before he conceived the idea of surpassing Ramsay and Ferguson. In the meantime, besides the studious bent of his genius, there were some other particular! in his opening character, which might seem to mark him for a poet. He began early in life, to regard with a sort of sullen aversion and disdain, all that was sordid in the pursuits and interests of the peasants among whom he was placed. He became discontented with the humble labours to which he saw himself confined, and with the poor subsistence he was able to earn by them. He could not help looking upon the rich and great whom he saw around him, with an emotion between envy and contempt; as if something had still whispered to his heart, that there was injustice in the external inequa- lity between his fate and their's. While such emotions arose in his mind, he conceived an inclination, very common among the young men of the more un- cultivated parts of Scotland to emigrate to America, or the West Indies, in quest of a better fortune ;" at the same time, his heart was expanded with pas- 1 He himself relates that he first wrote verses in his sixteenth year, the subject being a comely lass of the name of Nelly, who was associated with him after the usual fashion on the 'Mri-est-rig. * His father, in his sixteenth year, had removed to Lochlea in Tarbolton parish, when the old man died of a broken heart in 17t. Burns, and his younger brother Gilbert, then took the small farm of Mossgeil, near Mauchline, which they cultivated in partnership for some time, till want of success, and the consequences of an illicit amour, induced tlio poet to think of leaving his native country. He was, strirtly speaking, a farmer, am! not .1 ploug!:- 444 ROBERT BURNS. sion.ite ardour, to meet the impressions ot' love and friendship. With several of the young peasantry, who were his fellows in labour, he contracted an affectionate intimacy of acquaintance. He eagerly sought admission into the brotherhood of free masons, which is recommended to the young men of this country, by nothing so much as by Us seeming to extend the sphere of .agreeable acquain- tance, and to knit closer the bonds of friendly endearment In some mason lodges in his neighbourhood, Burns had soon the fortune, whether good or bad, to gain the notice of several gentlemen, better able to estimate the true value of such a mind as his, than were his fellow peasants, with whom alone he had hitherto associated. One or two of them might be men of convivial dispositions, and of religious notions rather licentious than narrow ; who encouraged his talents, by occasionally inviting him to be the companion of their looser hours ; and who were at times not ill pleased to direct the force of his wit and humour, against those sacred things which they affected outwardly to despise as mere bugbears, while they could not help inwardly trembling before them, as realities. For a while, the native rectitude of his understanding, and the excellent prin- ciples in which his infancy had been educated, withstood every temptation to intemperance or impiety. Alas ! it was not always so. When his heart was first struck by the charms of village beauty, the love he felt was pure, tender, simple, and sincere, as that of the youth and maiden in his Cottar's Saturday Night, If the ardour of his passion hurried him afterwards to triumph over the chastity of the maid he loved ; the tenderness of his heart, the manly honesty of his soul, soon made him offer, with eager solicitude, to repair the injury Ly marriage. 3 About this time, in the progress of his life and character, did he first be<;iii to be distinguished as a poet. A masonic song, a satirical epigram, a rhyming epistle to a friend, attempted with success, taught him to know his own powers, and gave him confidence to try tasks more arduous, and which should command still higher bursts of applause. The annual celebration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in the rural parishes of Scotland, has much in it of those old man, at the time when his book brought him into notice; though it must be acknowledged he took his full share of farm labour of all kinds. Some of his best poems were written as lie was driving the plough over the leas of Mossgeil. * Hums was early distinguished for his admiration of the fair sex. One of his first and purest attachments was to u girl named Mary Campbell, who the truth must be told was neither more nor less than the hyre---u-oman or dam -maid at Colonel Montgomery's house of Coilsfield. He intended to marry this person, but she died at Greenock on her return from a visit to her relations in Argyleshire. It is a strange instance of the power of Burns' imagination and passion, that he has celebrated this poor peasant girl in strains of affection and lamentation, such as might have embalmed the memory of the proudest dame that ever poet worshipped. In his poem, beginning " Ye banks, and braes, and streams around The castle of Montgomerie," He describes in the most beautiful language their tender and final parting on the banks of the Ayr. At a later period of life, on the anniversary of that hallowed day, he devoted a night to a poetic vigil in the open air, and produced his deeply pathetic elegy to her memory, commencing " Thou lingering star, with lessening ray." And all this beautiful poetry was written by a Scottish peasant in reference to a byref-wnman The attachment alluded to in the text was to Miss Jean Armour, the daughter of a mason in Mauchline. Burns proposed at first that their guilt should be palliated by a matrimonial union ; but, as his circumstances were desperate, his character not admired by the more sober and calculating villagers, and as he proposed to seek an establishment for his wife in a distant land, the fatiier of his unfortunate partner preferred the alternative of keeping her single and degraded, to permitting her to attach herself to the fortunes of her lover, even though a certain degree of respectability was to be secured by that course. It was not till after the poet had acquired fortune and fame by his writings, and, we blush to say, after a iecond transgression, that he was regularly married. On both of these occasions the lady produced twins. See Lockhart's Life of burns. ROBERT BURNS. 445 popish festivals, in which superstition, traffic, and amusement, used to be so strangely intermingled. Burns saw, and seized in it one of the happiest of all subjects, to afford scope for the display of that strong and piercing sagacity by which he could almost intuitively distinguish the reasonable from the absurd, and the becoming from the ridiculous; of that picturesque power of fancy, which enabled him to represent scenes, and persons, and groupes, and looks, attitude, and gesture, in a manner almost as lively and impressive, even in words, as it' all the artifices and energies of the pencil had been employed ; of that knowledge which he had necessarily acquired of the manners, passions, and prejudices of the rustics around him of whatever was ridiculous, no less thr.n of whatever was affectingly beautiful, in rural life. A thousand prejudices of popish, and perhaps too, of ruder pagan superstition, have, from time imme- morial, been connected in the minds of the Scottish peasantry, with the annual recurrence of the Eve of the Festival of .ill the Saints, or Halloween. These were all intimately known to Burns, and had made a powerful impression upon his imagination and feelings. He chose them for the subject of a poem, and produced a piece, which is the delight of those who are best acquainted with its subject ; and which will not fail to preserve the memory of the prejudices and usages which it describes, when they shall, perhaps, have ceased to give one merry evening in the year, to the cottage fireside. The simple joys, the honest love, the sincere friendship, the ardent devotion of the cottage ; whatever in the more solemn part of the rustic's life is humble and artless, without being mean or unseemly or tender and dignified, without aspiring to stilted grandeur, or to unnatural, buskined pathos had deeply impressed the imagination of the rising poet ; had in some sort wrought itself into the very texture of the fibres of his soul. He tried to express in verse, what he most tenderly felt, what he most enthusiastically imagined ; and produced the Cottar's Saturday Night. These pieces, the true effusions of genius, informed by reading and observa- tion, and prompted by his own native ardour, as well as by friendly applause, were soon handed about among the most discerning of Burns' acquaintance ; and were by every new reader perused, and re-perused, with an eagerness of delight and approbation, which would not suffer him* long to withhold them from the press. A subscription was proposed, 1 was earnestly promoted by some gentlemen, who were glad to interest themselves in behalf of such signal poetical merit ; was soon crowded with the names of a considerable number of the inhabitants of Ayrshire, who, in the proffered purchase, sought not less to gratify their own passion for Scottish poesy, than to encourage the wonderful ploughman. At Kilmarnock, were the poems of Burns, for the first time, printed. The whole edition was quickly distributed over the country. It is hardly possible to express, with what eager admiration and delight they were every where received. They eminently possessed all those qualities which can contribute to render any literary work quickly and permanently popular. They were written in a phraseology, of which all the powers were universally felt ; and which being at once antique, familiar, and now rarely written, was hence fitted to serve all the dignified and picturesque uses of poetry, without making it unintelligible. The imagery, the sentiments, were, at once, f; fully natural, and irresistibly impressive and interesting. Those topics ot satire and scandal in which the rustic delights ; that humorous delineation of cha racter and that witty association of ideas, familiar and striking, yet not naturally allied to one another, which has force to shake his sides with laughter ; those fancies of superstition, at which he still wonders and tren ' It was chiefly in order to raise the means of transporting himself to the West Indies, that Burns first published his poems. 440 ROBERT BUIINS. affecting sentiments and images of true religion, which are at onre dear and awful to his heart, were represented by Burns with all a poet's magic pown-. Old and young, high and low, grave and gay, learned or ignorant, all were alike delighted, agitated, transported. I was at that time resident in Galloway, contiguous to Ayrshire, and 1 can well remember, how that even plough-boys and maid-servants would have gladly parted with the wages which they earned the most hardly, and which they wanted to purchase necessary clothing, if they might but procure the works of Burns. A copy happened to be presented from a gentleman in Ayrshire to a friend in my neighbourhood ; he put it into my hands, as a work containing some effusions of the most extraordinary genius. I took it, rather that I might not disoblige the lender, than from any ardour of curiosity or expectation. " An unlettered ploughman, a poet?" said I, with contemptuous incredulity. It was on a Saturday evening. I opened the volume, by accident, while I was undressing to go to bed. I closed it not, till a late hour on the rising Sunday morn, after I had read over every syllable it contained. And, Ex illo Corydon, Corydon est tern pore nobis ! VIRG. EC. 2. In the meantime, some few copies of these fascinating poems found their way to Edinburgh : and one was communicated to the late amiable and ingenious Dr Thomas Blacklock. There was, perhaps, never one among all mankind, whom you might more truly have called an angel upon earth, than Dr Blacklock : he was guileless and innocent as a child, yet endowed with manly sagacity and pene- tration ; his heart was a perpetual spring of overflowing benignity ; his feelings were all tremblingly alive to the sense of the sublime, the beautiful, the tender, the pious, the virtuous : poetry was to him the dear solace of perpetual blind- ness ; cheerfulness, even to gaiety, M'as, notwithstanding that irremediable misfortune under which he laboured, long the predominant colour of his mind : in his latter years, when the gloom might otherwise have thickened around him, hope, faith, devotion the most fervent and sublime, exalted his mind to heaven, and made him maintain his wonted cheerfulness, in the expectation of a speedy dissolution. This amiable man of genius read the poems of Burns with a nice perception, with a tremblingly impassioned feeling, of all their beauties. Amid that tumult of emotions, of benevolence, curiosity, admiration, which were thus excited in his bosom, he eagerly addressed some encouraging verses to the rustic bard ; which conveying the praises of a poet, and a judge of poetical composition, were much more grateful to Burns than any applauses he had before received from others. It was Blacklock's invitation that finally determined him to abandon his first intentions of going abroad to the West Indies ; and rather to repair to Edinburgh, with his book, in hopes there to find some powerful patron, and perhaps, to make his fortune by his poetry. In the beginning of the winter 17 86-87, 2 Burns came to Edinburgh; by Dr Blacklock he was received with the most flattering kindness ; and was eagerly introduced to every person of taste and generosity among the good old man's friends. It was little that Blacklock had it in his power to do for a brother poet ; but that little he did with a fond alacrity, and with a modest grace, which made it ten times more pleasing, and more effectually useful to him, in whose favour it was exercised, than even the very same services would have been from almost any other benefactor. Others soon officiously interposed to share with Blacklock, in the honour of patronising Burns. He had brought * November, 1780. ROBERT BURNS. 447 fiom his Ayrshire friends, some letters of recommendation : some of his rural acquaintance coming, as well as himself, to Edinburgh, for the winter, did him what offices of kindness they conveniently could. 1 Those very few, who pos- sessed at once true taste and ardent philanthropy, were soon earnestly united in his praise : they who were disposed to favour any good thing belonging to Scotland, purely because it was Scottish, gladly joined the cry; those who had hearts and understandings to be charmed, without knowing why, when they saw their native customs, manners, and language, made subjects and materials of poesy, could not suppress that voice of feeling which struggled to declare itself for Burns : for the dissipated, the licentious, the malignant wits, and the free- thinkers he was so unfortunate as to have satire, and obscenity, and ridicule of things sacred, sufficient to captivate their fancies : even for the pious, he liad passages in which the inspired language of devotion might seem to come from his tongue : and then, to charm those whom nought can delight but wonders, whose taste leads them to admire only such things as a juggler eating fire, a person who can converse as if his organs of speech were in his belly, a lame sailor writing with his toes for want of fingers, a peer or a ploughman making verses, a small coal-man directing a concert why, to those people the Ayrshire poet might seem precisely one of the most wonderful of the wonders after winch they were wont to gape. Thus did Burns, ere he had been many weeks in Edinburgh, find himself the object of universal curiosity, favour, admiration, and fondness. He was sought after, courted with attentions the most respectful and assiduous, feasted, flattered, caressed, treated by all ranks as the first boast of our country ; whom it was scarcely possible to honour and reward to a degree equal to his merits. In comparison with the general favour which now pro- mised to more than crown his most sanguine hopes, it could hardly be called praise at all, which he had obtained in Ayrshire. In this posture of the poet's affairs, a new edition of his poems was earnestly called for ; he sold the copy-right to Mr Creech, for one hundred pounds ; but his friends, at the same time, suggested, and actively promoted a subscription for an edition, to be published for the benefit of the author, ere the bookseller's right should commence. Those gentlemen who had formerly entertained the public of Edinburgh with the periodical publication of the papers of the Mirror, having again combined their talents in producing the Louuggr, were, at this time, about to conclude this last series of papers ; yet, before the Lounger relinquished his pen, he dedicated a number to a commendatory criticism of the poems of the Ayrshire bard. That criticism is now known to have been written by the Honourable lord Craig, one of the senators of the college of jus- tice, who had adorned the Mirror with a finely written essay, in recommend- ation of the poetry of Michael Bruce. The subscription-papers were rapidly tilled ; the ladies, especially, vied with one another who should be the first to subscribe, and who should procure the greatest number of other subscribers, for the poems of a bard who was now, for some moments, the idol of fashion. The Caledonian Hunt, a gay club, composed of the most opulent and fashionable young men in Scotland, professed themselves the patrons of the Scottish poet, and eagerly encouraged the proposed republication of his poems. Six shillings was all the subscription-money demanded for each copy ; but many voluntarily paid half a guinea, a guinea, or. two guineas; and it was supposed tliat the poet 1 He resided during the whole winter in the lodgings of one of his Mauchhiie arquam- uces, Mr Jolm Richmond, who had come to Edinburgh in order to study the law. iuom and one bed served both. It was from this humble scene m the Lawmnarktt, that li issued to attend the brilliant parties of the duchess of Gordon and other iashionablts, and to this den he retired, after hours spent amid the lustres of the most splendid apartment* in tancc rooi the new towii. 448 - ROBERT BURNS. might derive from the subscription, and the sale of liis copy-right, a clear profit of, at least, seven hundred pounds; a sum that, to a man who had hitherto lived in his indigent circumstances, would be absolutely more than the vainly expected wealth of Sir Epicure Mammon. Burns, in the mean time, led a life differing from that of his original condi- tion in Ayrshire, almost as widely as differed the scenes and amusements of Lon- don, to which Omiah was introduced under the patronage of the Earl of Sand- wich, from those with which he had been familiar in the Friendly Isles. The conversation of even the most eminent authors, is often found to be so unequal lo the fame of their writings, that he who reads with admiration, can listen with none but sentiments of the most profound contempt. But the conversation < i Burns was, in comparison with the formal and exterior circumstances of his edu- cation, perhaps even more wonderful than his poetry. He affected no soft airs, or graceful motions of politeness, which might have ill accorded with the rustic plainness of his native manners. Conscious superiority of mind taught him to associate with the great, the learned, and the gay, without being overawed into any such bashfulness as might have made him confused in thought, or hesitating in elocution. He possessed, withal, an extraordinary share of plain common sense, or mother wit, which prevented him from obtruding upon persons, of whatever rank, with whom lie was admitted to converse, any of those effusions of vanity, envy, or self-conceit, in which authors are exceedingly apt to indulge, who have lived remote from the general practice of life, and whose minds have been almost exclusively confined to contemplate their own studies and their works. In conversation he displayed a sort of intuitive quickness ^and rectitude of judgment upon every subject that arose. The sensibility of his heart, and the vivacity of his fancy, gave a rich colouring to whatever reasoning he was disposed to advance ; and his language in conversation was not at all less happy than in his writings. For these reasons he did not cease to please immediately after lie had been once seen. Those who had met and conversed with him once, were pleased to meet and converse with him again and again. I remember that the late Dr Robertson once observed to me, that he had scarcely ever met with any man Avhose conversation discovered greater vigour and activity of mind than that of Burns. Every one wondered that the rustic bard was not spoiled by so much caressing, favour, and flattery, as he found ; and every one went on to spoil him, by continually repeating all these, as if with an obstinate resolution, that they should, in the end, produce their effect Nothing, however, of change in his manners appeared, at least for a while, to show that this was at all likely to happen. He, indeed, maintained himself, with considerable spirit, upon a foot- ing of equality with all whom he had occasion to associate or converse with ; yel he never arrogated any superiority, save what the fair and manly exertion of his powers, at the time, could undeniably command. Had he but been able to give a steady preference to the society of the virtuous, the learned, and the wisa, rather than to tli.it of the gay and the dissolute, it is probable that he could not have failed to rise to an exaltation of character and of talents fitted to do honour to human nature. Unfortunately, however, that happened which was natural in those unaccus- tomed circumstances in which Burns found himself placed. He could not assume enough of superciliousness to reject the familiarity of 'all those who, without any sincere kindness for him, importunately pressed to obtain his acquaintance and intimacy. He was insensibly led to associate less with the learned, and austere, and the rigorously temperate, than with the young, with the votaries of intem- perate joys, with persons to whom he was commended chiefly by licentious wit, and with whom lie could not long associate Avithout sharing in the excesses of ROBERT BURNS. 449 their debauchery. 1 Even in the country, men of this sort had begin to fasten on him, and to seduce him to embellish the gross pleasures of their looser hours, with the charms of his wit and fancy. And yet 1 have been informed by Mr Arthur Bruce, a gentleman of great worth and discernment, to whom Burns was, in his earlier days, well known, that he had, in those times, seen the poet steadily resist such solicitations and allurements to excess in convivial enjoyment, as scarcely any other could have withstood. But the enticements of pleasure too often unman our virtuous resolution, even while we wear the air of rejecting them with a stern brow ; we resist, and resist, and resist ; but, at last, suddenly turn and passionately embrace the enchantress. The bucks of Edinburgh ac- complished, in regard to Burns, that in which the bowrs of Ayrshire had failed. After residing some months in Edinburgh, he began to estrange himself, not altogether, but in some measure, from the society of his graver friends. Too many of his hours were now spent at the tables of persons who delighted to urge conviviality to drunkenness in the tavern, or even in less commendable society. He suffered himself to be surrounded by a race of miserable beings, who were proud to tell that they had been in company with Burns ; and had seen Burns as loose and as foolish as themselves. He was not yet irrecoverably lost to tem- perance and moderation, but he was already almost too much captivated wiili these wanton revels, to be ever more won back to a faithful attachment to their more sober charms. He now also began to contract something of new arrogance in conversation. Accustomed to be, among his favourite associates, what is vul- garly but expressively called "the cock of the company," he could scarcely re- frain from indulging in similar freedom, and dictatorial decision of talk, even in the presence of persons who could less patiently endure his presumption. * Thus passed two winters, and an intervening summer, of the life of Burns. The subscription edition of his poems, in the meantime, appeared ; and, al- though not enlarged beyond that which came from the Kilmarnock press, by any new pieces of eminent merit, did not fail to give entire satisfaction to the sub- scribers. He at one time, dining this period, accompanied, for a few weeks, into Berwickshire, Robert Ainslie, Esq. [Writer to the Signet], a gentleman ol the purest and most correct manners, 4 who was accustomed sometimes to soothe the toils of a laborious profession, by an occasional converse with polite litera- ' Burns came to Edinburgh at an unfortunate time a time of greater licentiousness, perhaps, in all the capitals of Europe, and this northern one among the rest, than had beet known for a long period. Men of the best education and rank at this time drank like tl Scandinavian barbarians of olden time; and in general there was little refinement HI the amusements of any class of the community. 2 With companions and friends, who claimed no superiority in anything, the sensitive mind of Burns must have been at its best and happiest, because comp Mely at its ease, a,, free movement given to the play of all its feelings and faculties ; and. n, such companies we cannot but believe that his wonderful conversational powers shone forth in t various splendour. He must have given vent there to a thousand fam,lmr fane, their freedom and all their force; which, in the fastidious society of h,h We hi. ""^ n : tion must have been too much fettered even to conceive; and "**J~ J from his lips, would either not have been understood, or would have ^g.ven offe delicacy of breeding which is often hurt even by the best manners of tjwe whose^ man. ers of nature's teaching, and unsubjected to the ^^"^^^ fS of hi, s.niu, i,, full power n.l lustre -..r .. .i ss5 religion. 450 ROBERT BURNS. ture. and \viili general science. At another time lie wandered on a jaunt of four or live weeks through the Highlands, in company with the late Mr William \icol, a man who hail been the companion and friend of Dr Gilbert Stuart, and who, in vigour of intellect, and in wild, yet generous, impetuosity of passion, re- markably resembled both Stuart and Burns ; who for his skill and facility in La ii composition, v> r as perhaps without a rival in Europe; but whose virtues and geni is were clouded by habits of bacchanalian excess; whose latter years were vexatiously embittered by a contest with a creature, who, although accidentally exalted into com- petition with him, was unworthy even to unloose his shoe-latchet ; who, bythe most unwearied and extraordinary professional toil, in the midst of a persevering dissi- pation, by which alone it was, at any time, interrupted, won and accumulated an honourable and sufficient competence for his family; and, .alas! who died within these few weeks, of a jaundice, with a complication of other complaints, the eft'ects of long continued intemperance ! So much did the zeal of friendship, and the ambition of honest fame, predominate in Nicol's mind, that he was, in his last hours, exceedingly pained by the thought, that since he had survived Burns, there remained none who might rescue his mixed character from misre- presentation, and might embalm his memory in never-dying verse ! In their excursion, Burns and his friend Nicol were naturally led to visit the interesting scenery adjacent to the duke of Atholl's seat at Uunkeld, on the banks of the Tay. While they were at a contiguous inn, the duke, accidentally informed of Mr Burns' arrival so near, invited him, by a polite message, to Uun- keld House. Burns did not fail to attend his obliging inviter ; was received with flattering condescension ; made himself sufficiently agreeable by his con- versation and manners ; was detained for a day or two by his grace's kind hos- pitality ; and, ere he departed, in a poetical petition, in name of the river Bruar, which falls into the Tay, within the duke's pleasure grounds at Blnir- Alhol, suggested some new improvements of taste, which have been since happily made in compliance with his advice. I relate this little incident, rather to do honour to the duke of Athol, than to Burns; for, if I be not exceedingly mis- taken, nothing that history can record of George the Third, will, in future times, be accounted more honourable to his memory, than the circumstances and the conversation of his well-known interview with Dr Johnson. The two congenial companions, Burns and Nicol, after visiting many other of those romantic, pic- turesque, and sublime scenes which abound in the Highlands of Scotland ; after fondly lingering here and there for a day or two at a favourite inn, returned at last to Edinburgh ; and Burns was now to close accompts with his bookseller, and to retire with his profits in his pocket to the country. 31 r Creech has obligingly informed me, that the whole sum paid to the poet, for the copy-right, and for the subscription copies of his book, amounted to nearly eleven hundred pounds. Out of this sum, indeed, the expenses of print- ing the edition for the subscribers, were to be deducted. I have likewise reason to believe, that he had consumed a much larger proportion of these gains than prudence could approve, while he superintended the impression, paid his court to his patrons, and waited the full payment of the subscription money. He was now, at last, to fix upon a plan for future life. He talked loudly of independence of spirit, and simplicity of manners : and boasted his resolution to return to the plough. Yet, still he lingered in Edinburgh, week after week, and month after month, perhaps expecting that one or other of his noble patrons might procure him some permanent and competent annual income, which should set him above all necessity of future exertions to earn for himself the means of subsistence ; perhaps unconsciously reluctant to quit the pleasures of that volup- tuous town life to which he had for some time too willingly accustomed himselt ROBERT BURNS. 451 Aii accidental dislocation or fracture of an ann or a leg, which confined him for some weeks to his apartment, left him, during this time, leisure for serious reflec- tion; and he determined to retire from the town, without longer delay. None of ah 1 his patrons interposed to divert him from his purpose of returning to the plough, by the offer of any small pension, or any sinecure place of moderate emolument, such as might have given him competence, without withdrawing him from his poetical studies. It seemed to be forgotten, that a ploughman thus exalted into a man of leiters, was unfitted for his former toils, without being regularly qua- lified to enter the career of any new profession ; and that it became incumbent upon those patrons who had called him from the plough, not merely to make him their companion in the hour of riot not simply to fill his purse with gold for a few transient expenses, but to secure him, as far as was possible, from being ever overwhelmed in distress, in co. -.sequence of the favour which they had shown him, and of the habits of life into which they had seduced him. Per- haps, indeed, the same delusion of fancy betrayed both Burns and his patrons into the mistaken idea, that, after all which had passed, it was still possible for him to return, in cheerful content, to the homely joys and simple toils of undis- sipated rural life. In this temper of Bnrns's mind, in this state of his fortune, a farm and the excise were the objects upon which his choice ultimately fixed for future employ- ment and support. Mr Alexander Wood, the s'irgeon who attended him during the illness occa- sioned by his hurt, no sooner understood his patient's wish to seek a resource in the service of the excise, than he, with the usual activity of his benevolent char- acter, effectually recommended the poet to the commissioners of excise ; and the name of Burns was enrolled in the list of their expectant officers. Peter Miller, Jisq. of Dalswinton, deceived, like Bums himself, and Burns' other friends, into an idea, that the poet and exciseman might yet be respectable and happy as a farmer, generously proposed to establish him in a farm, upon conditions of lease which prudence and industry might easily render exceedingly advantageous. Burns eagerly accepted the offers of this benevolent patron. Two of the poet's friends, from Ayrshire, were invited to survey that farm in Dumfries-shire, which .Air Miller offered. A lease was granted to the poetical farmer at that annual rent which his own friends declared that the due cultivation of his farm might easily enable him to pay ; what yet remained of the profits of his publication was laid out in the purchase of farm stock ; and 3Ir Miller might, for some short time, please himself with the persuasion that he had approved himself the liberal patron of genius ; had acquired a good tenant upon his estate ; .and had placed a deserving n,an in the very situation in which alone he himself desired to be placed, in order to be liappy to his wishes. 1 i Heron's account of the leasing of Ellisland is erroneous : the following we before to be a correct and authorised statement, being given as such in Dr Robert Anderson s Edinburgh Magudne, for June 1799: " Mr Miller offered Mr Bums the choice of several farms on the estate oi ton, which were at that time out of lease. Mr Burns gave the preference to the Bum ol i-llis mil, most char most showing 452 ROBERT BURNS. Burns, with his Jane, whom he now married, took up their residence upon liis farm. The neighbouring farmers and gentlemen, pleased to obtain for an inmate among them, the poet by whose works they had been delighted, kindly sought his company, and invited him to their houses. He found an inexpressi- ble charm in sitting down beside his wife, at his own fireside ; in wandering over his own grounds ; in once more putting his hand to the spade and the plough ; in forming his inclosures ; .and managing his cattle. For some mo- ments he felt almost all that felicity which fancy had taught him to expect in his new situation. He had been, for a time, idle; but his muscles were not yet unbraced for rural toil. He hnd heen admitted to flatter ladies of fashion ; but he now seemed to find a joy in being the husband of the mistress of his affec- tions ; in seeing himself the father of her children, such as might promise to attach him for ever to that modest, humble, and domestic life, in which alone he could hope to be permanently happy. Even his engagements in the service of the excise did not, at the very first, threaten necessarily to debase him, by asso- ciation with the mean, the gross, and the profligate, to contaminate the poet, or to ruin the farmer. But, 'it could not be : it was not possible for Burns now to assume that sober- ness of fancy and pnssions, that sedateness of feeling, those habits of earnest attention to gross and vulgar cares, without which, success in his new situation was not to be expected. A thousand difficulties were to be encountered and, overcome, much money was to be expended, much weary toil was to be exer- cised, before his farm could be brought into a state of cultivation, in which its produce might enrich the occupier. The prospect before him was, in this re- spect, such as might well have discouraged the most stubbornly laborious peasant, the most sanguine projector in agriculture ; and much more, therefore, was it likely, that this prospect should quickly dishearten Bums, who had never loved labour, and who was, at this time, certainly not at all disposed to enter into agriculture with the enthusiasm of a projector. Beside all this, I have reason to believe, that the poet had made his bargain rashly, and had not duly availed himself of his patron's generosity. His friends, from Ayrshire, were little ac- quainted with the soil, with the manures, with the markets, with the dairies, with the modes of improvement, in Dumfries-shire. They had set upon his farm rather such a value of rental, as it might have borne in Ayrshire, than that which it could easily afford in the local circumstances in which it was actually placed. He himself had inconsiderately submitted to their judgment, without once doubting whether they might not have erred against his interests, without the slightest wish to make a bargain artfully advantageous to himself. And the necessary consequence was, that he held his farm at too high a rent, contrary to his land- lord's intention. The business of the excise too, as he began to be more and more employed in it, distracted his mind from the care of his farm, led him into gross and vulgar society, and exposed him to many unavoidable temptations to drunken excess, such as he had no longer sufficient fortitude to resist. Amidst the anxieties, distractions, and seducements, which thus arose to him, home became insensibly less and less pleasing; even the endearments of his Jane's affection began to lose their hold on his heart ; he became every day less and less unwilling to forget in riot those gathering sorrows which he knew not to subdue. Mr Miller, and some others of his friends, would gladly have exerted an the habits of dissipation of a town life; and that, had poor Burns followed the advice given him, he might, perhaps, have still been alive and happy." There can be no doubt, from the cheapness of the farm and the length of the lease, that, had the poet continued to cultivate it for some years, he would have had the opportunity of becoming very rich. ROBERT BURNS. 453 influence over his mind, which might have preserved him, in this situation of his affairs, equally from despondency, and from dissipation. But Burns' temper spurned all control from his superiors in fortune. He resented, as an arrogant encroachment upon his independence, that tenor of conduct by which Mr Miller wished to turn him from dissolute conviviality, to that steady attention to the business of his farm, without which it was impossible to thrive in it. In the neighbourhood were other gentlemen occasionally addicted, like Burns, to con- vivial excess ; who, while they admired the poet's talents, and were charmed with his licentious wit, forgot the care of his real interests in the pleasure which they found in his company, and in the gratification which the plenty and festi- vity of their tables appeared evidently to afford him. With these gentlemen, while disappointments and disgusts continued to multiply upon him in his present situation, he continued to diverge every day more and more into dissipation ; and his dissipation tended to enhance whatever was disagreeable and perplexing in the state of his affairs. He sunk, by degrees, into the boon-companion of mere excisemen ; and almost every drunken fellow, who was willing to spend his money lavjshly in the ale- house, could easily command the company of Burns. The care of his farm was thus neglected ; waste and losses wholly consumed his little capital ; he resigned his lease into the hands of his landlord ; and retired with his family to the town of Dumfries, determining to depend entirely for the means of future support upon his income as an exciseman. Yet during this unfortunate period of his life, which passed between his/de- parture from Edinbutgh to settle in Dumfries-shire, and his leaving the country in order to take up his residence in the town of Dumfries, the energy and acti- vity of his intellectual powers appear to have been not at all impaired. He made a collection of Scottish songs, which were published, with the music, by a Mr Johnston, an engraver, in Edinburgh, in three small volumes, octavo. 1 In making this collection, he, in many instances, accommodated new verses to the old tunes, with admirable felicity and skill. He composed several other poems, such as the tale of Tarn o' Shanter, the Whistle, Verses on a Wounded Hare, the pathetic Address to R * * * G * * * of F * * *, and some others which he afterwards permitted Mr Creech to insert in the fourth and fifth editions of his poems.'' He assisted in the temporary institution of a small subscription library, for the use of a number of the well-disposed peasants, in Viis neighbourhood. He readily aided, and by his knowledge of genuine Scottish phraseology and man- ners, greatly enlightened the antiquarian researches of the late ingenious Captain Grose. He still carried on an epistolary correspondence, sometimes gay, spor- tive, humorous, but always enlivened by bright flashes of genius, with a number of his old friends, and on a very wide diversity of topics. 3 At times, as it should 1 Six thin volumes, containing the most complete body of Scottish song and music in exist- ence entitled, the Scottish Musical Museum. 2 Among the labours of t reckoned a hundred exceller huted to the musical publication of Mr George Tho , but was more elegant and expensive, and contained accompaniments for the tunes by er nodern musicians. . , , 3 Bums lent his muse on several occasions to aid the popular candidates in contested ele tions. In one poem, which was handed about in manuscript, relating to such an artair, lie thus alluded to Dr Muirhead, minister of Ur, in Galloway, a fellow rhymer :- sh Musical Museum. of this period of his life, and of the few remaining years, must be illent songs, partly in Scotch and partly in English, which he coiitrv- lication of Mr George Thomson, which resembled that of Johnston, " Armorial bearings from the banks of Ur, An old crab apple rotten at the core." This ver is hit applied very well, for'Dr M. was a little, wind-dried, unhealthy looking rnannikm, yproudof his genealogy, arid ambitious of being acknowledged on alloecasionsas the chief of 4.31 IlOBEllT BURNS. seem from his writings of this period, he reflected with inexpressible heart-bit- terness, on the high hopes front which he had fallen ; on the errors of moral conduct into which he had been hurried, by the ardour, and, in some mea- sure, by the very generosity of his nature ; on the disgrace and wretched- ness into which he saw himself rapidly sinking ; on the sorrow with which his misconduct oppressed the heart of his Jane ; on the want and destitute misery in which it seemed probable that he must leave her and her infants ; nor, amidst these agonizing reflections, did he fail to look, with indignation half invidi- ous, half contemptuous, on thase, who, with moral habits not more excellent than his, witlt powers of intellect far inferior, yet basked in the sunshine of fortune, and were loaded with th wealth and honours of the world, while his follies could not obtain pardon, nor h.s wants an honourable supply. His wit became, from this time, mote gloomily sarcastic; and his conversation and writings began to assume something of a tone of misanthropical malignity, by which they had not been before, in any eminent degree, distinguished. But, witli all theso failings, he was still that exalted mind which had raised itself above the depression of its original condition ; with all the energy of the lion, pawing to set free his hinder limbs from the incumbent earth, he still appeared not less the archangel ruined. What more remains there for m to relate ? In Dumfries his dissipation be- came still more deeply habitual ; 4 he w.is here more exposed than in the coun- try to be solicited to share the riot of the dissolute and the idle ; foolish young men, such as writers' apprentices, young surgeons, merchants' clerks, and his brother excisemen, flocked eagerly about him, and from time to time pressed him to drink with them, that they might enjoy his wicked wit.' s His friend the Muirheiuls ' He WTIS not disposed, however, to sit down with the affront: on the contrary i he re-plied to it in a virulent diatribe, wliich we present to the reader for the lirst time, as a remarkable specimen of clerical and |x>ctid irritability, ami curious, moreover, as pcrliapb the only contemporary satire upon Burns of which the world has ever hum! besides the im- mortal "trimming letter" from his tailor. Dr Muirhead's jeu d' esprit is in die shape of a translation t'rorn .Martial's ode "Ail Vacerram:" " Vncerras, shabby son of whore, Why do thy patrons keep thee poor? Thou ait a s.cophant and traitor, A liar, a calumniator, Who conscience, (hadst thou that,) wouldst sell, Nay, lave the common sewers of hell For whisky Eke, most precious imp, Thou art a gauger, rhymester, pimp, How comes it, then, Vaeerras, that Thou still art poor as a church rat?" 4 .Mr Lock hart, in his life of Burns, lias laboured with much ingenuity and eloquence to show that the account wliich Heron gives of the latter years of the poet is considerably exag- gerated. According to a series of documents quoted by Mr Lockhart, Hums, though latterly a di^si|Kited man, was at no period remarkable for intemperance. The present author enter- tains no feeling upon this subject except a regard for truth: he has therefore weighed in one scale the common report of the age following Bums's own time, and the accounts then written, allot' which were very unfavourable against the later narratives, in which his faults are exten- uated or explained away ; and the result is a conviction in liis own mind that, as the tempta- tions of Bums were great, so were his errors by no niemis little. He must acknowledge tli?.i he has always looked upon this question in a different light from that in which it is viewed by other writers. Regarding Bums altogether as a great moral wonder, he esteems his fault*, whatever they were, as only the accident of his character; and he would no more put them out of view in an estimate of the whole man, than would a physiologist overlook any slight malformation in some splendidly elegant subject. He therefore adopts Heron's account not without a perception tliat it is somewhat overdrawn, but also assured, since it comes nearest of any thing he lias ever sot n to the reports of the greater number of witnesses, tliat it must be the nearest of all to the truth. " To a lady, (I have it from herself,) who remonstrated with him on the danger from drink, and the pursuits of some of his associates, he replied, ' Madam, they would not thank me for my company, if I did not drink with them , I must give them a slice of my constitu- tion." Letter from Blooinjield, the ]>oet t to llu: Earl of JBuc/inri, E dinburgh Moidldy JUaga tine and Review, 1810. ROBERT BURNS. 455 Nicol made one or two autumnal excursions to Dumfries; and when they met in Dumfries, friendship, and genius, and wanton wit, and good liquor could never fail to keep Burns and Nicol together, till both the one and the other were as dead drunk as ever was Silcnus. The Caledonian Club, too, and the Dumfriesshire and Galloway hunt, had occasional meetings in Dumfries, after Burns came to reside there; and the poet was, of course, invited to share their conviviality, and hesitated not to accept the invitation. The morals of the town were, in consequence of its becon.ing so much the scene of public amusement, deplorably corrupted ; and, though a husband and a father, poor Burns did not escape suffering by the general contamination. 1 In the intervals between his 1 Mr Robert Chambers, in his "Life and Works of Robert Burns" (]8">::), observes, that "the charges brought against the poet on the score of intemperance have been' proved to be greatly exaggerated. He was only the occasional boon companion, never the dram-drinker or the sot." Mr Chambers, as the result of his own inquiries into tho habits of the poet, gives the following description of the daily routine of his Dumfries life: -" So existence flows on with Burns in this pleasant southern town. He has daily duties in stnmping leather, gauging malt-vats, noting the manufacture of candles, and granting licenses for the transport of spirits. These duties he performs with fidelity to the King and not too much rigour to the subject. As he goes about them in the forenoon, in his respectable suit of dark clothes, and with his little boy Robert perhaps holding by hi:; hand and con' ersing with him on his snhool-exercises, he is beheld by the general public with respect, as a person in some authority, the head of a family, and also as a man of literary note ; and people are heard addressing him deferentially as Mr. Burns a f&rm of his name which is still prevalent in Dumfries. At a leisure-hour before dinner, he will call at some house where there is a piano, such as Mr Newall, the writer's, and there have some young Miss to touch over for him one or two of his favourite Scotch airs, snob as the ' Sutor's Daughter,' in order that he may accommodate to it some stanzas that have been humming through his brain for the last few days. For another half-hour, ho will be seen standing at the head of some cross street with two or three young fellows, bankers' clerks, or ' writer chiels ' commencing business, whom he is regaling with sallies of his bright hut not always innocent wit indulging there, indeed, in a strain of conversa- tion so different from what had passed in the respectable elder y writer's mansion, that, though he were not the same man, it could not have been more different. Later in the day, he takes a solitary walk along the Dock Green by the river side, or to Lincludcti, and composes the most part of a new song ; or he spends a couple of hours at his folding- down desk, between the fire and window in his parlour, transcribing, in his bold round hand, the remarks which occur to him on Mr Thomson's last letter, together with some of his own recently-composed songs. As a possible variation upon this routine, he has been sepn passing along the old bridge of Devorgilla Balliol, about three o'clock, with hia sword-cane in his Jiand, and his black beard unusnady well shaven, being on his way to dine with John Syme at Ryedale, where young Mr Oswald of Auchincruive is to he of the party or maybe in the opposite direction, to partake of the luxuries of John Bushby at Tinwald Downs. But we presume a day when no such attraction invades. The evening is passing quietly at home, and pleasant-natured Jean has made herself neat, and come iu at six o'clock to give him his tea a meal he alw.iys takes. At this period, how- ever, there is something remarkably exciting in the proceedings of the French army under Pic-hegru : or Fox, Adam, or Sheridan, is expected to make an onslaught upon the ministry in the House of Commons. The post comes into Dumfries at eight o'clock at night. There is always a group of gentlemen on the street, eager to hear the news. Burns saunter* out to the High Street, and waits amongst the rest The Convention has decreed the annexation of the Netherlands or the new treason bill h s passed the House of Lords, with only the feeble protest of Bedford, Derby, and Lauderdale. These things merit some discussion. The trades-lads go off to strong ale in the closes ; the gentlemen :-lide in little groups into the King's Arms Hotel or the George. As for Burns, he will just have a single glass and a half-hour's chat beside John Hyslop's fire, and then go quietly home. So he is quickly absorbed in the little narrow close where that vintner maintains his state. There, however, one or two friends have already established them- selves, all with precisely the same virtuous intent. They heartily greet the bard. Meg their laughter. One jug succeeds another mirth abounds and it is not till Mrs Hyslop has declared that they are going beyond all bounds, and she positively will not give tl another dr p of hot water, that our bard at length bethinks him of returning me, where Bonnie Jean has been lost in peaceful slumber for three hours, after vainly won dering ' what can be keeping Robert out so late the nicht.' Burns gets to bed a lit excited and worn out but not in a state to provoke much remark from his amiable 456 ROBERT BURNS. different fits of intemperance, he suffered still the keenest anguish of remorse, and horribly afflictive foresight. His Jane still behaved with a degree of ma- ternal and conjugal tenderness and prudence, which made him feel more bitter- ly the evil of his misconduct, although they could not reclaim him. At last, crippled, emaciated, luring the very power of animation wasted by disease, quite broken-hearted by the sense of his errors, and of the hopeless miseries in which he saw himself and his family depressed, with his soul still tremblingly alive to the sense of shame, and to the love of virtue; even to the last feebleness, and amid the last agonies of expiring life, yielding readily to any temptation that offered the semblance of intemperate enjoyment ; he died at Dumfries, on the 21st of July, 1796, while he was yet three or four years under the age of forty. After his death, it quickly appeared that his failings had not effaced from the minds of his more respectable acquaintance, either the regard which had once been won by his social qualities, or the reverence due to his intellectual talents. The circumstances of want in which he left his family, were noticed by the gentle- men of Dumfries, with earnest commiseration. His funeral was celebrated, by the care of his friends, with a decent solemnity, and with a numerous attendance of mourners, sufficiently honourable to his memory. 1 Several copies of verses, having, if no other merit, at least that of a good subject, were insetted in dif- ferent newspapers, upon the occasion of his death. A contribution, by subscrip- tion, was proposed, for the purpose ot raising a small fund for the decent support of his widow, and the education of his infant children. This subscription was very warmly promoted, and not without considerable success, by John Syme Esq. of Dumfries, by Alexander Cunningham, Esq. W.S. Edinburgh ; and by Dr James Currie, and Mr Roscoe, of Liverpool. Mr Stephen Kemble, mana- ger of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, with ready liberality, gave a benefit night for this generous purpose. 1 sliall conclude this paper with a short estimate of what appeal's to me to liave i>een Burns's real merits, as a poet and as a man : the most remarkable quality he displayed, both in his writings and his conversation, was, certainly, an enlarged, vigorous, keenly discerning, conscious comprehension of mind. What- ever be the subject of his verse, he still seems to grasp it with giant force ; to wield and turn it with easy dexterity ; to view it on all sides, with an eye which no turn of outline and no hue of colouring can elude ; to mark all its relations to the group of surrounding objects, and then to select what he chooses O represent to our imagination, with a skilful and happy propriety, which shows him to have been, at the same time, master of all the rest. It will not be very easy for any other mind, however richly stored with various know- ledge ; for any other imagination, however elastic and inventive, to find any new and suitable topic that has been omitted by Burns, in celebrating the sub- partner, in whom nothing can abate the veneration with which she has all along regarded him. And though he beds at a latish hour, most likely he is up next morning between seven and eight, to hear little Robert his day's lesson in Casar, or, if the season invites, to take a half -hour's stroll before breakfast along the favourite Dock (jreen." ' He was buried with military honours by the Dumfries Volunteers, of which corps he had been a member. It had been one of the latest flashes of his humour to request a brother Volunteer not to allow the "awkward squad" to fire over him. A mausoleum was erected over the poet's grave in 1817, at a cost of 1500; and a monument on the banks of the Doon, in 1823, at a cost of 1600. Both are visited by thousands annually. Mrs Brns died in 18'34, in her sixty-eighth year. Three of the poet's sons, viz., Robert, William, and James, yet (183'2) survive. ROBERT BURNS. 457 jects of all his greater and more elaborate poems. It is impossible to consider without astonishment, that amazing fertility of invention which is displayed, un- der the regulation of a sound judgment, and a correct taste, in the Twa Dogs ; the Address to the Deil ; Scotch Drink ; the Holy Fair ; Hallowe'en ; the Cottar's Saturday Night ; To a Haggis ; To a Louse ; To a Mountain Daisy ; Tarn o' Shanter ; on Captain Grose's peregrinations ; the humble Petition of Bruar Water ; the Bard's Epitaph. Shoemakers, footmen, threshers, milk-maids, peers, staymakers, have all written verses, such as deservedly attracted the no- tice of the world ; but in the poetry of these people, while there was commonly some genuine effusion of the sentiments of agitated nature, some exhibition of such imagery as at once impressed itself upon the heart ; there was also much to be ever excused in consideration of their ignorance, their extravagance of fancy, their want or abuse of the advantages of a liberal education. Burns has no pardon to demand for defects of this sort He might scorn every concession which we are ready to grant to his peculiar circumstances, without being on this account reduced to relinquish any part of his claims to the praise of poetical excellence. He touches his lyre, at all times, with the hand of a master. He demands to be ranked, not with the Woodhouses, the Ducks, the Ramsays, bul with the Miltons, the Popes, the Grays. He cannot be denied to have been largely endowed wilh that strong common sense which is necessarily the very source and principle of all fine writing. The next remarkable quality in this man's character, seems to have consisted in native strength, ardour, and delicacy of feelings, passions, and affections Si vis me Jlere, dolendum primum est ipsi tibi. All that is valuable in poetry, and, at the same time, peculiar to it, consists in the effusion of particu- lar, not general, sentiments, and in the picturing out of particular imagery. But education, reading, a wide converse with men in society, the most exten- sive observation of external nature, however useful to improve, cannot, even all combined, confer the power of apprehending either imagery or sentiment with ,sach force and vivacity of conception as may enable one to impress whatever he may choose upon the souls of others, with full, irresistible, electric energy; this is a power which nought can bestow, save native fondness, delicacy, quickness ardour, force of those parts of our bodily organization, of those energies in the structure of our minds, on which depend all our sensations, emotions, appetites, passions, and affections. Who ever knew a man of high original genius, whose senses were imperfect, his feelings dull and callous, his passions all languid and stagnant, his affections without ardour, and without constancy ? others may be artisans, speculatists, imitators in the fine ails ; none but the man who is thus nclily endowed by nature, can be a poet, an artist, an illustrious inventor in philosophy. Let any person first possess this original soundness, vigour, and lelicacy of the primary energies of mind ; and then let him receive some im- pression upon his imagination, which shall excite a passion for this or that par- ticular pursuit : he will scarcely fail to distinguish himself by manifestations of exalted and original genius. Without having, first, those simple ideas winch belong, respectively, to the different senses, no man can ever form for himself the complex notions, into the composition of which such simple ideas necessarily jnter. Never could Burns, without this delicacy, this strength, this vivacity of ;he powers of bodily sensation, and of mental feeling, which I would here claim as the indispensable native endowments of true genius without these, never could he have poured forth those sentiments, or pourtrayed those images which have so powerfully impressed every imagination, and penetrated every heart. Alu.osi Mi the sentiments and images diffused throughout the poems of Burns, are frosii irom the mint of nature. He sings what he had himself beheld with 3M 458 ROBERT BURNS. intereait'd attention what he had himself felt with keen emotions of pain or pleasure. You actually see what he describes ; you more than sympathise with his joys ; your bosom is inllamed with all his fire ; your heart dies away within you, infected by the contagion of his despondency. He exalts, for a time, the genius of his reader to the elevation of his own ; and, for the moment, confers upon him all the powers of a poet. Quotations were endless ; but any person of discernment, taste, and feeling, who shall carefully read over Burns' book, will not fail to discover, in its every page, abundance of those sentiments and images to which this observation relates ; it is originality of genius, it is keen- ness of perception, it is delicacy of passion, it is general vigour and impetuosity of the whole mind, by which such effects are produced. Others have sung, in the same Scottish dialect, and in familiar rhymes, many of the same trpic* which are celebrated by Burns ; but what, with Burns, pleases or fasc inates, in the hands of others, cnly disgusts by its deformity, or excites contempt by its meanness and uninteresting simplicity. A third quality which the life and the writings of Burns show to have be- longed to his character, was a quick and correct discernment of the distinction between right and wrong between truth and falsehood; and this, accompanied with a passionate preference of whatever was right and true, with an indignant abhorrence of whatever was false and morally Mrong. It is true that he did not uluays steadily distinguish and eschew the evils of drunkenness and licentious love ; it is true that these, at times, seem to obtain even the approbation of his muse; but there remains in his works enough to show, that his cooler reason, and all his better feelings, earnestly rejected those gay vices which he could sometimes, unhappily, allow himself to practise, and sometimes recommend to others, by the charms which his imagination lent them. What was it but the clear and ardent discrimination of justice from injustice, which inspired that in- "dignation with which his heart often burned, when he saw those exalted by for- tune, who were not exalted by their merits? His Cottar's Saturday Night, and all his grave poems, breathe a rich vein of the most amiable, yet manly, and even delicately correct morality. In his pieces of satire, and of lighter humour, it is still upon the accurate and passionate discernment of falsehood, and of mo- ral turpitude, that his ridicule turns. Other poets are often as remarkable for the incorrectness, or even the absurdity of their general truths, as for interesting sublimity, or tenderness of sentiment, or for picturesque splendour of imagery : Burns is not less happy in teaching general truths, than in that display of sen- timent and imagery, which more peculiarly belongs to the province of the poet. Burns's morality deserves this high praise, that it is not a system merely of dis- cretion ; it is not founded upon any scheme of superstition, but seems to have always its source, and the test by which it is to he tried, in the most diffusive benevolence, and in a regard for the universal good. The only other leading feature of character that appears to be strikingly dis- played in the life and writings of Burns, is a lofty-minded consciousness of his own talents and merits. Hence the fierce contemptuous asperity of his satire ; the sullen and gloomy dignity of his complaints, addressed, not so much to alarm the soul of pity, as to reproach injustice, and to make fortunate baseness shrink abashed ; that general gravity and elevation of his sentiments, which admits no humbly insinuating sportiveness of wit, which scorns all compromise between the right and the expedient, which decides, with the authoritative voice of a judge, from v\hom there is no appeal, upon characters, principles, and events, whenever they present themselves to notice. From his works, as from his conversation and manners, pride seems to have excluded the effusions of vanity. In the com- ROBERT BURNS. 459 position, or correction of his poetry, he never suflered the judgment, even of his most respectable friends, to dictate to him. This line, in one of his poems, (" When 1 look back on prospects drear") was criticised ; but he would not con- descend either to reply to the criticism, or to alter the expression. Not a few of his smaller pieces are sufficiently trivial, vulgar, and hackneyed in the thought are such as the pride of genius should have disdained to write, or, at least, to publish ; but there is reason to believe that he despised such pieces, even while he wrote and published them ; that it was rather in regard to the effects they had already upon hearers and readers, tlian from any overweening opinion of their intrinsic worth, he suffered them to be printed. His wit is al- ways dignified : he is not a merry-andrew in a motley coat, sporting before von for your diversion ; but a hero, or a philosopher, deigning to admit you to wit- ness his relaxations, still exercising the great energies of his soul, and little caring, at the moment, whether you do, or do not, cordially sympathise with his feelings. His poems may be all distributed into the two classes of pastorals, and pieces upon common life and manners. In the former class, I include all those in which rural imagery, and the manners and contiments of rustics are chiefly de- scribed : in the ktter, I would comprehend his epigrams, epistles, and, in short, all those pieces in which the imagery and sentiments are drawn from the condition and appearances of common life, without any particular reference to the country. It is in the first class that the most excellent of his poems are certainly to be found. Those few pieces which he seems to liave attempted in the Delia Crusca style, ap- pear to me to be the least commendable of all his writings; he usually employs those forms of versification which have been used chiefly by the former writers or poetry in the Scottish dialect, and by some of the elder English poets. His phrase- ology is evidently drawn from those books of English poetry which were in his hands, from the writings of former Scottish poets, and from those unwritten stores of the Scottish dialect, which became known to him, in the conversation ol his fellow peasants." Some other late writers in the Scottish dialect seem to think, that not to write English is certainly to write Scottish ; Burns, avoid- ing this error, hardly ever transgressed the propriety of English grammar, except in compliance with the long accustomed variations of the genuine Scottish dialect. From the preceding detail of the particulars of this poet's life, the reader will naturally and justly infer him to have been an honest, proud, warm-hearted man ; of high passions, and sound understanding, and a vigorous and excursive imagination. He was never known to descend to any act of deliberate mean- ness. In Dumfries he retained many respectable friends, even to the last. It may be doubted whether he has not, by his writings, exercised a greater power over the minds of men, and, by consequence, on their conduct, upon their hap- piness and misery, and upon the general system of life, than has been exercised by any half dozen of the most eminent statesmen of the present age. The power of the statesman is but shadowy, as far as it acts upon externals alone : the power of the writer of genius subdues the heart and the understanding, and having thus made the very spring of action its own, through them moulds almost all life and , nature at its pleasure. Burns has not failed to command one remarkable sort ol homage, such as is never paid but to great original genius a crowd of poetasters started up to imitate him, by writing verses as he had done, in the Scottish dia- icct ; but, O imitatores ! servum pecus ! To persons to whom the Scottish dialect, and the customs and manners of rural life in Scotland have no charms, I shall possibly appear to have said too much about Bums: by those who 4GO KOBERT BURNS. pnssioimtely admire him, 1 shall, perhaps, be blamed, as having said too little. 1 ' 1 The following letter and poem by Burns were first published in the original edition of this work: LETTER TO MR BURNESS, AT MONTROSE. MY DEAR SIR, I this moment receive yours receive it with the honest hospitable warmth of a friend's welcome. Whatever comes from you wakens always up the bitter blood about my heart, which your kind little recollections of my parental friends carries as far sis it will go. "Tis there, Sir, that man is blest! 'tis there, my friend, man feels a consciousness of something within him above the trodden clod 1 The grateful reverence to the hoary, earthly author of his being the burning glow, when he clasps the woman of his soul to liis liosom the tender yearnings of heart for the little angels to whom he has given existence,. these nature has poured in milky streams about the human heart; and the man who never rouses them to action, by the inspiring influences of their proper objects, loses by far the most pleasurable part of his existence. My departure is uncertain, but I do not think it will be till after harvest. I will be on very short allowance of time, indeed, if I do not comply with jour friendly invitation. When it will be I don't know, but if 1 can make my wish good, I will endeavour to drop you a line sometime before. My best compliments to Mrs . , I should [be] equally mortified should I drop in when she is abroad; but of that, I suppose, there is little chance. What 1 have wrote, heaven knows; 1 have not time to review it: so accept of it in the beaten way of friendship. With the ordinary phrase, perhaps, rather more than ordinary sincerity, I am, dear Sir, ever yours, &c. MOSGIEL, Tuesday noon, S*j>t.26, 1786. ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CHILD () SWEET be thy sleep in the land of the grave, My dear little angel, for ever For ever oh no ! let not man be a slave, His hopes from existence to sever. Though cold be the clay where thou pillow 'st thy head, In the dark silent mansions of sorrow, The spring shall return to thy low narrow bed, Like the beam of the day-star to-morrow. The flower-stem shall bloom like thy sweet seraph form, Ere the Spoiler had nipt thee in blossom, When thou shrunk from the scowl of the loud winter storm, And nestled thee close to that bosom. O still I behold thee, all lovely in death, Reclined on the lap of thy mother, When the tear trickled bright, when the short stifled breath, Told how dear ye were aye to each other. My child, thou art gone to the home of thy rest, Where suffering no longer am harm thee, Where the songs of the good, where the hymns of the blest, Through an endless existence shall charm thee. While he, thy fond parent, must, sighing, sojourn Through the dire desert regions of sorrow, O'er the hope and misfortune of being to mourn. And sigh for this life's latest morrow. DAVID CALDERWOOD. 461 CALDERWOOD, DAVID, an eminent divine and ecclesiastical historian. The year of his birth, the place of his education, and the character of the family from which he was descended, are ajl alike unknown. The earliest ascer- tained fact of his life is his settlement, in 1604, as minister of Crailing, in Rox- burghshire. Being a zealous supporter of the principles of presbytery, he set himself with all his might to oppose the designs of the court, which aimed at the introduction of a moderate episcopacy. In 1608, when the Bishop of Glasgow paid an official visit to the synod of Merse and Teviotdale, Mr Calderwood gave in a paper declining his jurisdiction. For this act of contumacy, he was con- fined for several years to his parish, so as to prevent his taking any share in the public business of the church. In the summer of 1617, king James paid a visit to Scotland, for the purpose of urging forward his episcopal innovations. On this occasion, while the parliament was considering how to intrust powers of ecclesiastical supremacy to the king, the clergy were convened to deliberate in a collusive manner, so that every thing might appear to be done with the consent and approbation of the church. This assemblage was attended by the bishops, who affected to consider it an imitation of the convocations of the English church. Calderwood, being now permitted to move about, though still forbidden to attend synods or presbyteries, appeared at this meeting, which he did not scruple to proclaim as in no respect a convocation, but simply a free assembly of the clergy. Finding himself opposed by some friends of the bishops, Mr Calderwood took leave of them in a short but pithy speech, allusive to the sly attempts of ihe king to gain the clergy, by heightening their stipends : " It was absurd," he said, " to see men sitting in silks and satins, crying poverty in the kirk, while purity was departing." He assisted, however, at another meeting of the clergy, where it was resolved to deliver a protest to parliament, against a particular article, or bill, by which the power of framing new laws for the church was to be intrusted to an ecclesiastical council appointed T>y the king. This protest was signed by Mr Archibald Simpson, as representing all the rest, who, for his justification, furnished him with a roll containing their own signatures. One copy of the document was intrusted to a clergyman of the name of Hewat, who, having a seat in parliament, undertook to present it. Another remained with Mr Simpson, in case of accident Mr Hewat's copy having been torn in a dis- pute with Archbishop Spottiswoode, Mr Simpson presented his, and was soon after called before the tyrannical court of High Commission, as a stirrer up of sedition. Being pressed to give up the roll containing the names of his abettors, he acknowledged it was now in the hands of Mr David Calderwood, who was then cited to exhibit the said roll, and, at the same time, to answer for his seditious and mutinous behaviour. The Commission court sat at St Andrews, and the king having come there himself, had the curiosity to examine Mr Calderwood in person. Some of the persons present came up to the peccant divine, and, in a friendly manner, counselled him to "come in the king's will,'* that his majesty might pardon him. But Mr Calderwood entertained too strong a sense of the propriety and importance of what he had been doing, to yield up the point in this manner. " That which was done," he said, " was done with de- liberation." In the conversation which ensued betwixt the king and him, the reader will be surprised to find many of the most interesting points of modern liberty, asserted with a firmness and dignity worthy of an ancient Roman. King What moved you to protest? 462 DAVID CALDEUWOOD. Calderwood. An article concluded among the laws of the articles. King. But what fault was there in it? Calderwood. It cutteth off our General Assemblies. King. ( After inquiring how long Mr Calderwood had been a minister,) Hear me, Mr David, I have been an older keeper of General Assemblies than you. A General Assembly serveth to preserve doctrine in purity, from error, and heresy, the kirk from schism, to make confessions of faith, to put up petitions to the king in parliament But as for matters of order, rites, and things indif- ferent in kirk policy, they may be concluded by the king, with advice of bishops, and a choice number of ministers. Calderwood. Sir, a General Assembly should serve, and our General Assem- blies have served these fifty-six years, not only for preserving doctrine from error and heresy, but also to make canons and constitutions of all rites and orders be- longing to the kirk. As for the second point, as by a competent number of ministers may be meant a General Assembly, so also may be meant a fewer number of ministers than may make up a General Assembly. The king then challenged him for some words in the protestation. Calderwood, Whatsoever was the phrase of speech, we meant nothing but to protest that we would give passive obedience to his majesty, but could not give active obedience to any unlawful thing which should flow from that article. King. Active and passive obedience ! Calderwood. That is, we will rather suffer than practise. King. I will tell thee, man, what is obedience. The centurion, when he 6 lid to his servants, to this man, go, and he goeth, to that man, come, and he cometh : that is obedience. Calderwood. To suffer, Sir, is also obedience, howbeit, not of that same kind. And that obedience, also, was not absolute, but limited, with exception of a coun- termand from a superior power. Secretary. Mr David, let alone [cease] ; confess your error. Calderwood. My lord, I cannot see that I have committed any fault. King. Well, Mr Calderwood, I will let you see that I am gracious and fa- vourable. That meeting shall be condemned before ye be condemned ; all that are in the file shall be filed before ye be filed, provided ye will conform. Calderwood. Sir, I have answered my libel I ought to be urged no fur- ther. King. It is true, man, ye have answered your libel ; but consider I am here ; I may demand of you wheii and what 1 will. Calderwood. Surely, Sir, I get great wrong, if I be compelled to answer here in judgment to any more than my libel King. Answer, Sir ! ye are a refractor : the Bishop of Glasgow, your ordi- nary, and the Bishop of Caithness, the moderator of your- presbytery, testify ye have kept no order ; ye have repaired neither to presbyteries nor synods, and in no wise conform. Colder wood. Sir, I have been confined these eight or nine years ; so my con- formity or non-conformity, in that point, could not be well known. King. Good faith, thou art a very knave. See these self-same puritans ; they are ever playing with equivocations. Finally, the King asked, " If ye were relaxed, will ye obey or not ? Calderwood. Sir, I am wronged, in that I am forced to answer questions be- ride the libel ; yet, seeing I must answer, I say, Sir, I shall either obey you, or pive a reason wherefore I disobey ; and, if I disobey, your Majesty knows 1 am to lie under the danger as I do now. King. That is, to obey either actively or passively. JOHN CALLANDER. 463 Calderwood. I can go no further. He was then removed. Being afterwards called up, and threatone;! with de- privation, he declined the authority of the bishops to that effect ; for which con- tumacy, he was first imprisoned in St Andrews, and then banished from the king- doiu. When we read such conversations as the above, we can scarcely wonder at the civil war which commenced twenty years afterwards, or that the efforts of the Stuarts to continue the ancient arbitrary government of England were finally ineffectual. Mr Calderwood continued to reside in Holland from the year 1619, till after the death of king James, in 1G25. Before leaving his country, he published a book on the Perth assembly, for which he would certainly have been visited with some severe punishment, if he had not been quick to convey himself beyond seas. In 1623, he published, in Holland, his celebrated treatise, entitled, " Altare Damascenum," the object of which was to expose the insidious means by which the polity of the English church had been intruded upon that of Scotland. King James is said to have been severely stung in conscience by this work. He was found very pensive one day by an English prelate, and being asked why he was so, answered, that he had just read the Altar at Damascus. The bishop desired his majesty not to trouble himself about that book, for he and his brethren would answer it. " Answer that, man !" cried the king sharply ; " how can ye ? there is nothing in it but scripture, reason, and the fathers." An attempt was made, however, to do something of this kind. A degraded Scottish gentleman, named Scott, being anxious to ingratiate himself at court, published a recantation as from the pen of Mr Calderwood, who, he believed, and alleged, was just dead. There was only one unfortunate circumstance against Mr Scott. Mr Calderwood soon let it be known that he was still alive, and of the same way of thinking as ever. The wretched impostor is said to have then gone over to Holland and sought for Mr Calderwood, in order to render his work true by assassinating him. But this red ink postscript was never added, for (he divine had just return- ed to his native country. Mr Calderwood lived in a private manner at Edinburgh for many years, chiefly engaged, it is supposed, in the unobtrusive task of compiling a history of the church of Scotland, from the death of James V. to that of James VI. His ma- terials for this work lay in Knox's History, Mr James Melville's Observations, Mr John Davidson's Diary, the Acts of Parliament and Assembly, and other state documents. The work, in its original form, has hitherto been deemed too large for publication ; but manuscript copies are preserved in the archives of the church, Glasgow University, and in the Advocates' Library. On the breaking out of the troubles in 1638, Mr Calderwood appeared on the public scene, as a warm promoter of all the popular measures. At the Glasgow assembly in that ^ear, and on many future occasions, his acquaintance with the records of the church proved of much service. He now also resumed his duty as a parish niin ister, being settled at Pencaitland, in East Lothian. In 1643, he was appointed one of the committee for drawing up the directory for public worship ; and, in 1646, an abstract of his church history was published under the care of the General Assembly. At length, in 1651, while Cromwell's army occupied the Lothians, Mr Calderwood retired to Jedburgh, where, in the immediate neigh- bourhood of the scene of his earliest ministrations, he sickened and died at ? good old age. Both his " Altare Damascenum," and his " True History of the Church of Scotland," have been printed oftener than once ; but an edition of his larger history is still a desideratum in Scottish literature. CALLANDER, JOHX, of Craigforth, an eminent antiquary, was born in the early part of the eighteenth century. He was the descendant of John Callan- 464 JOHN CALLANDER. der, his majesty's master-smith in Scotland, who seems to have been an industri- ous money-making person, and who, tradition says, acquired part of his fortune from a mistake on the part of government in paying in pounds sterling an ac- count which had been stated in Scots money. The estate of Craigiorth, which originally belonged to lord Elphinstone, v>as, in 16t>4. purchased by Mr Alex- ander lliggins, an advocate, who became embarrassed by the purchase, and con- veyed his right to Callander, from whom he had obtained large advances of money. From tliat period the estate has remained in the possession of the family, notwithstanding the strenuous, but unsuccessful exertions of lliggins to regain it ; and of this family the subject of the present memoir was the repre- sentative. 1 Of his private history, very little has been collected ; nor would it probably have much interest to our readers.' 4 The nex-t work published by him was " Terra Australis Cognita, or Voyages to the Terra Australis, or Southern Hemisphere, during the IGtli, 17th, and 18th centuries," Edinburgh, I76'(i ; 3 rols. 8vo., a work translated from the French of Ue Bvosses. It was not till thirteen years afterwards that he gave to the world his " Essay towards a literal English Version of the New Testament in the Epistle to the Ephesians," printed in quarto at Glasgow, in 1779. This very singular production proceeds upon the principle of adhering rigidly to the order of the Greek words, and abandon- ing entirely the English idiom. As a specimen of the translation, the 31st verso of chapter v. is here transcribed. " Because of this shall leave a man, the father of him, and the mother, and he shall be joined to the wife of him, and they shall be even the two into one flesh." The notes to the work are in Greek, "a proof, certainly ," as lias been judiciously remarked, " of Mr Callander's learn- ing, but not of his wisdom." ( Urine's Bibtiotheca Biblica, p. 71. ) After it followed the work by which Mr Callander is best known : " Two ancient Scot- tish poems ; the Gaberlunzie Man, and Christ's Kirk on the Green, with notes and observations." Edin. ] 782, 8vo. It would seem that he had for some time meditated a dictionary of the Scottish language, of which he intended this as a specimen, but which he never prepared fc.r publication. His principle, as an etymologist, which consists " in deriving the words of every language from the radical sounds of the first or original tongue, as it was spoken by Noah and the builders of Babel," is generally considered fanciful, and several instances have been given by Chalmers and others of the absurdity of his derivations. It is to be regretted, that, in preparing these poems for the press, lie should have adopt- ed so incorrect a text. In editing the latter of the two, he neither consulted the Bannatyne MS., nor adhered strictly to the version of bishop Gibson or Allan Ramsay, but gave " such readings as appeared to him most consonant to the phraseology of the sixteenth century." Throughout the work he was in- debted to his friend Mr George 1'aton, of Edinburgh ; but it would appear, from one of the letters lately published, that the latter is not to be considered respon- sible either for the theories which the work contains, or for the accuracy with which it was executed. In April, 1781, Mr Callander was, without any solicitation on his part, elect- ed a fellow of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, which had been formed in the preceding November,- by the late earl of Buchan ; and in the first list of oftice- 1 Litters from Bishop Percy, &c. to George Paton. Preface, p. viii. 2 Though a member Of the Scottish bar, the early part of his life seems to have .be. n devoted to ekissical pursuits', in which it is acknowledged, he made great proficiency . A considera- ble portion of the results of these studies were presented by him to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, in August, 1761. His MS&, which are entitled, " Spicile.jjia Antiquitatis Graese, sive ex Veteribus 1'oetis Deperdiu Fragmenta,"arein five volunn s, folio. The same researches were aft rvvurds directed to the illustration of Milton's " Paradise Lost," of which a .specimen, containing his annotations on the first book, was printed at Glasgow, by Mi >-'> Fouiis, in 1750, (4in. pp. 16?.) Of these notis an ammnt wili afterwards bf giv\:i. JOHN CALLA.NDER. 465 bearers his name appears as Secretary for foreign correspondence. Along with several other donations, he presented them, in August of the same ye.-:r, with the " Fragment^" already mentioned, and with the MS. notes on Paradise Lost, in niise folio volumes. For more than forty years these annotations remained un- noticed in the society's possession, but at length a paper written, it is supposed, by the respectable biographer of the Admirable Crichton and Sir Thomas Craig, appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, in which Callander is charged with having, without acknowledgment, been indebted for a large proportion of his materials to the labours of Patrick Hume, a Scotsman, who published a huge folio of 321 pages, on the same subject, at London, in 1695. At the suggestion of Mr David Laing, a committee was appointed, in 1820, to examine the MSS., and present the result to the society. From the report* drawn up by Mr Laing, it appears tliat, although there are some passages in which the analogy between Callander's remarks and those of Hume are so close that no doubt can be entertained of the one having availed himself of the notes of the other, yet that the proportion to the whole mass is so small, that it cannot be affirmed with truth the general plan or the largest portion of the materials of the work are derived from that source. On the other hand, it is candidly admitted, that no acknowledgment of his obli- gations to his fellow-countryman are made by Mr Callander ; but unfortunately a preface, in which such obligations are generally noticed, has never been writ- ten for, or, at all events, is not attached to, the work. .According to the testi- mony of Bishop Newton, the work by Hume contains " gold ;" but it is concealed among " infinite heaps of rubbish :" to separate them was the design of the learned bishop, and our author seems to have acted precisely upon the same prin- ciple. Nor does he confine himself merely to the commentaries of Hume ; he avails himself as often, and to as great an extent, of the notes of Newton, and of the other contemporary critics. Besides the works already mentioned, Mr Callander seems to have projected several others. A specimen of a " Bibliotheca Septentrionalis " was printed in folio, in 1778, " Proposals for a History of the Ancient Music of Scotland, from the age of the venerable Ossian, to the beginning of the sixteenth century," in quarto, 1781, and a specimen of a Scoto-gothic glossary, is mentioned in a letter to the Earl of Buchan, in 1781. He also wrote " VindicicB Miltonianje, or a refutation of the charges brought against Milton by [the infamous] William Lander." The publication of this work was, however, rendered unnecessary, from the appearance of the well-known vindication by i "r Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury. This was, perhaps, fortunate for its author ; not aware of Lauder's character, he had taken it for granted that all his quotations from Milton's works were correct, but he soon found that he had defended the poet where " he stood in no need of any apology to clear his fame." It is probably hardly worth mentioning, that he also projected an edition of Sir David Lindsay's " Satyre," to be accompanied by a life of Lindsay from the pen of George Paton, which he does not seem to have accomplished. ' 31 r Callander, says the editor of Paton's Letters, 4 was, for many years, par- ticularly distinguished for his companionable qualities. He had a taste for music, and was an excellent performer on the violin. Latterly he became very retired in his habits, saw little company, and his mind was deeply affected by a religio melancholy, which entirely unfitted him for society. He died, at a good old ago, upon the 14th September, 1789. By his wife, who was of the lamily oi 3 See Trans, of the Soc. of Scot. Autiq. vol. 3, part I. pp. 4"LcUi-rs from Thomas Ptrcy, DD. afterwards Bishop t,,Uiouiore f of Craig forth, Esq., David Herd, and others, to George Patoii. Edinburgh, p. x. 3N 466 RICHARD CAMERON. Livingston of Westquarter, he had seventeen children. His great-grandson is at present in possession of the estate." CAMERON, RICHARD, an eminent martyr of the Scottish church, and whose name is still retained in the popular designation of one of its sects, was the son of a small shopkeeper at Falkland in Fife. His first appearance in life was in the capacity of schoolmaster and precentor of that parish under the episcopal clergyman. But, being converted by the field preachers, he afterwards became an enthusiastic votary of the pure presbyterian system, and, resigning those offices, went to i-eside as a preceptor in the family of Sir Walter Scott of Harden. From this place he was soon compelled to remove, on account of his refusal to attend the ministrations of the parish clergyman. He then fell into the company of the celebrated Mr John Welch, and was by him persuaded to accept a licence as a preacher. This honour was conferred upon him by Mr Welch and another persecuted clergyman in the house of Haughhead in Rox- burghshire ; so simple was the ceremony by which these unfortunate ministers recruited their ranks. Cameron soon excited the hostility of the indulged pres- byterian clergy, by the freedom with which he asserted the spiritual indepen- dence of the Scottish church, He was, in 1677, reproved for this offence at a meeting of the presbyterian clergy at Edinburgh. The indulged ministers having threatened to deprive him of his licence, he was induced to promise that he would be more sparing in his invectives against them; an engagement which afterwards burdened his conscience so much as to throw him into a deep mel- ancholy. He sought diversion to his grief in Holland, where his fervid eloquence and decided character made a strong impression upon the banished ministers. These men appear to have become convinced that his extraordinary zeal could end only in his own destruction, as Mr Ward, in assisting at his ordination, retained his hand for some time upon the young preacher's head, and exclaimed, " Behold, all ye beholders, here is the head of a faithful minister and ser- vant of Jesus Christ, who shall lose the same for his Master's interest, and it shall be set up before the sun and moon, in the view cf the world." Cameron returned to his native country in 1680, and, although field-preach- ing had now been nearly suppressed by the severity of the government, he immediately re-commenced that practice. It is necessary to be observed, that Cameron did not identify himself at any time with the presbyterian clergy in general ; while his proceedings, so little squared by prudence or expediency, were regarded by his brethren with only a gentler kind of disapprobation than that which they excited in the government. The persecutoi's had now, by dint of mere brute force, reduced almost all men to a tacit or passive conformity; and there only held out a small remnant, as it was termed, who could not be induced to remain quiet, and at whose head Mr Richard Cameron was placed, on account of his enthusiastic and energetic character. On the 20th of June, 1680, in company with about twenty other persons, well-armed, he entered the little remote burgh of Sanquhar, and in a ceremonious manner proclaimed at the cross, that he and those who adhered to him renounced their allegiance to the king, on account of hear, he succeeded to all his honours, and the remainder of his property. During the time he was in London, Argyle was certainly informed of the plan that had been already concerted for an invasion in Scotland by the Irish, under the marquis of Antrim, who for the part he performed in that tragical drama, was to be rewarded with the whole district of Kintyre, which formed a principal part of the family patrimony of Argyle. This partitioning of his property without having been either asked or given, and for a purpose so nefarious, must have had no small influence in alienating from the court a man who had imbibed high principles of honour, had a strong feeling of family dignity, and was an ardent lover of his country. He did not, however, take any decisive step till the assembly of the church, that met at Glasgow, November the twenty first, 1638, under the auspices of the marquis of Hamilton, as lord high commissioner. When the marquis, by protesting against every movement that was made by the court, and finally by attempting to dissolve it the moment it came to enter upon the business for which it had been so earnestly solicited, discovered that he was only playing the game of the king ; Argyle, as well as several other cf the young nobility, could no longer refrain from taking an active part in the work of Reformation. On the withdrawal of the commissioner, all the privy council followed him, except Argyle, whose presence gave no small encouragement to the assembly to continue its deliberations, besides that it impressed the specta- tors with an idea that the government could not be greatly averse to the con- tinuation of the assembly, since one of its most able and influential members encouraged it with his presence. At the close of the assembly, Mr Henderson the moderator, sensible of the advantages they had derived from his presence, complimented him in a handsome speech, in which he regretted that his lordship had not joined with them sooner, but hoped that God liad reserved him for the best times, and that he would yet highly honour him in making him instru- mental in promoting the best interests of his church and people. To this his lordship made a suitable reply, declaring that it was not from the want of af- fection to the cause of God and his country that he had not sooner come for- ward to their assistance, but from a fond hope that, by remaining with the court, he might have been able to bring about a redress of their grievances, to the comfort and satisfaction of both parties. Finding, however, that it was impos- sible to follow this course any longer, without being unfaithful to his God and his country, he had at last adopted the line of conduct they witnessed, and which he Mas happy to find had obtained their approbation. This assembly, so remarkable for the bold character of its acts, all of which were liable to the charge of treason, sat twenty-six days, and in that time accomplished all that had been expected from it The six previous assemblies, all that had been held since the accession of James to the English crown, were unanimously de- clared unlawful, and of course all their acts illegal In that held at Linlithgow 1606, all the acts that were passed were sent down from the court ready framed, and one appointing bishops constant moderators, was clandestinely inserted among them without ever having been brought to a vote, besides that eight of the most able ministers delegated to attend it, were forcibly prevented in an il- legal manner by the constituted authorities from attending. In that held at Glasgow in 1608, nobles and barons attended and voted by the simple mandate of the king, besides several members from presbyteries, and thirteen bishops who had no commission. Still worse was that at Aberdeen 1616, where the most shameful bribery was openly practised, and no less than sixteen of his creatures were substituted by the primate of St Andrews for sixteen lawfully chosen commis- sioners. That which followed at St Andrews was so notoriously illegal, as nevei ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 471 to h.ive found a defender; and the most noxious of all, that at Perth in 16U), was informal and disorderly in almost all possible respects. The chair was assumed by the archbishop of St Andrews without any election ; members, how- ever regularly chosen and attested, lhat were suspected not to be favourable to court measures, were struck out and their places filled up by such as the mana- gers could calculate upon being perfectly pliable. The manner of putting the votes and the use that was made of the king's name to influence the voters in this most shamefully packed assembly, were of themselves good and valid reasons for annulling its decisions. These six corrupt convocations being condemned as illegal, their acts became illegal of course, and episcopacy totally subverted. Two archbishops and six bishops were excommunicated, four bishops were de- posed, and two who made humble submission to the assembly, were simply sus- pended, and thus the whole Scottish bench was at once silenced. The assembly rose in great triumph on the twentieth of December. " We have now," said the moderator, Henderson, " cast down the walls of Jericho; let him that rebuildeth them beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite." While the assembly was thus doin- its work, the time-serving marquis of Hamilton was according to the in- structions of his master, practising all the shifts that he could devise for affording the king the better grounds of quarrel, and for protracting the moment of hos- tilities, so as to allow Charles time to collect his forces. Preparations for an in- vasion of Scotland had for some time been in progress, and in 3Iay, I63i), he approached the border with about sixteen thousand men, while a large host of Irish papists was expected to land in his behalf upon the west coast, and Ham- ilton entered the Frith of Forth with a fleet containing a small army. During this first campaign, while general Lesly with the main body of the Scottish army marched for the border with the view of carrying the war into England, Montrose, at this time the most violent of all the covenanters, was sent to The north to watch over Huntly and the Aberdonians, and Argyle proceeded to his own country to watch the Macdonalds, and the earl of Antrim, who threatened to lay it waste. For this purpose he raised not less than nine hun- dred of his vassals, part of whom he stationed in Kintyre, to watch the move- ments of the Irish, and part in Lorn to guard against the 3Iacdonalds, while with a third part he passed over into Arran, which he secured by seizing upon the castle of Brodick, one of the strengths belonging to the marquis of Hamilton ; and this rendered the attempt on the part of the Irish at the time -nearly impos- sible. On the pacification that took place at Birks, near Berwick, Argyle was sent for to court ; but the earl of Loudon having been sent up as commissioner from the Scottish estates, and by his majesty's order sent to the Tower, where he was said to have narrowly escaped a violent death, the earl of Argyle durst not, at this time, trust himself in the king's hands. On the resumption of hostilities in 1640, when Charles was found to have signed the treaty of Birks only to gain time till he could return to the charge with better prospects of success, the care of the west coast, and the reduction of the northern clans, was again in- trusted to Argyle. Committing, on this occasion, J;he care of Kintyre and the Islands to their own inhabitants, he traversed, with a force of about five thousand men attended by a small train of artillery, the districts of Badenoch, Athol, and Man- levying the taxes imposed by the estates, and enforcing subjection to their authority. The earl of Athol having made a show of resistance at the Ford of Lyon was sent prisoner to Stirling ; and his factor, Stuart, younger of Girant- ullv with twelve of the leading men in his neighbourhood, he commanded to enter in ward at Edinburgh till they found security for their good behaviour, and he exacted ten thousand pounds Scots in the district, for the support of h,s army Passin* thence into Angus, he demolished the castles of A.rly and For- 472 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. thar, residences of the earl of Airly, ami returned to Argyllshire, the greater part of his troops being sent to the main body in England. In this campaign the king felt himself just as little able to contend with his people, as in that of the previous year ; and by making concessions similar to those he had formerly made, and, as the event showed, with the same insincerity, he obtained another pacification at Rippon, in the month of October, HMO. Montrose, who had been disgusted with the covenanters, and gained over by the king, now began to form a party of loyalists in Scotland, preferring to be the head of an association of that nature, however dangerous the place, to a second or third situation in the insurgent councils. His designs were accidentally disco- vered, while he was along with the army, and he was put under arrest. To ruin Argyle, who was the object of his aversion, Montrose now reported, that at the Ford of Lyon he had said that the covenanters had consulted both lawyers and divines anent deposing the king, and had gotten resolution, that it might be done in three cases desertion, invasion, and rendition, and that they had re- solved, at the last sitting of parliament, to accomplish that object next session. For this malicious falsehood Montrose referred to a Mr John Stuart, commissary of Dunkeld, who upon being questioned retracted the accusation which he owned he had uttered out of pure malice, to be revenged upon Argyle. Stuart '.vas, of course, prosecuted before the justiciary for leading-making , and, though he pro- fessed the deepest repentance for his crime, was executed. The king, though he had made an agreement with his Scottish subjects, was getting every day upon worse terms with the English, and in the summer of 1641, came to Scotland with the view of engaging the affections of that kingdom to enable him to oppose the parliament with the more effect. On this occasion his majesty displayed great condescension ; he appointed Henderson to be one of his chaplains, attended divine service without either service-book or ceremonies, and was liberal of his favours to all the leading covenanters. Argyle was on this occasion particularly attended to, together with the marquis of Hamilton, and his brother Lanark, both of whom had become reconciled to the covenanters, and admitted to their full share of power. Montrose, in the meantime, was under confinement, but was indefatigable in his attempts to ruin those whom he supposed to stand be- tween him and the object of his ambition, the supreme direction of public af- fairs. For the accomplishment of this darling purpose, -he proposed nothing less than the assassination of the earls of Argyle and Lanark, with the marquis of Hamilton. Finding that the king regarded his proposals with horror, lie conceived the gentler design of arresting these nobles during the night, after being called upon pretence of speaking with him in his bed-chamber, when they might be delivered to a body of soldiers prepared under the earl of Crawford, who was to carry them on board a vessel in Leith Roads, or to assassinate them if they made any resistance ; but, at all events, detain them, till his majesty had gained a sufficient ascendancy in the country to try, condemn, and execute them under colour of law. Colonel Cochrane was to have marched with his regiment from Musselburgh to overawe the city of Edinburgh : a vigorous attempt was at ^he same time to liave been made by Montrose to obtain possession of the cas- tle, which, it was supposed, would have been the full consummation of their purpose. In aid of this plot, an attempt was made to obtain a declaration for the king from the English army, and the catholics of Ireland were to have made a rising, which they actually attempted on the same day, all evidently under- taken in concert for the promotion of the royal cause but all of which had t!i<; contrary effect. Some one, invited to take a part in the plot against Argyle and the Hamiltons, communicated it to colonel Hurry, who communicated it to general Leslie, and he lost not a moment in warning the persons more immediately con- ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 473 rorned, who took precautions for their security the ensuing right, and, next taming, after Citing an apology to the king for their conduct, fled to KinieJ Jruse, in \\ est Lothian, where the mother of the two Hamiltonsat that lime re- The city of Edinburgh was thrown into a state of the utmost alarm, in consequence of all the leading covenanters judging it necessary to have guards placed upon their houses for the protection of their persons. In the afternoon the king, going up the main street, was followed by upwards of five hundred' armed men, who entered the outer hall of the Parliament house along with him, which necessarily increased the confusion. The house, alarmed by this military army, refused to proceed to business till the command of all the troops in the city and neighbourhood was intrusted to general Leslie, and every stranger, whose character and business was not particularly known, ordered to leave the city. His majesty seemed to be highly incensed against the three noblemen, and demanded that they should not be allowed to return to the house till the' matter had been thoroughly investigated. A private committee was suggested, to which the investigation might more properly be submitted than to the whole house, in which suggestion his majesty acquiesced. The three noblemen re- turned to their post in a few days, were to all appearance received into their former state of favour, and the whole matter seemed in Scotland at once to have dropped into oblivion. Intelligence of the whole affair was, however, sent up to the English Parliament by their agents, who, under the name of commissioners, attended as spies upon the king, and it had a lasting, and a most pernicious ef- fect upon his affairs. This, and the news of the Irish insurrection, which speedily followed, caused his majesty to hasten his departure, after he had feasted the whole body of the nobility in the great hall of the palace of Holyrood, on the seven- teenth of November, 1641, having two days before created Argyle a marquis. On his departure the king declared, that he went away a contented prince from a contested people. He soon found, however, that nothing under a moral as- surance of the protection of their favourite system of worship, and church go- vernment an assurance which he had it not in power, from former circum- stances, to give could thoroughly secure the attachment of the Scots, who, to use a modern phrase, were more disposed to fraternize with the popular party in England, than with him. Finding on his return that the Parliament was get- ting more and more intractable, he sent down to the Scottish privy council a representation of the insults and injuries he had received from that parliament, and the many encroachments they had made upon his prerogative, with a re- quisition that the Scottish council would, by commissioners, send up to West- minster a declaration of the deep sense they entertained of the danger and in- justice of their present course. A privy council was accordingly summoned, to which the friends of the court were more particularly invited, and to this meet- ing all eyes were directed. A number of the friends of the court, Kinnoul, Roxburgh, and others, now known by the name of Banders, having assembled in the capital with numerous retainers, strong suspicions were entertained that a design upon the life of Argyle was in contemplation. The gentlemen 'of Fife, and the Lothians, with their followers, hastened to the scene of action, where the high royalists, who had expected to carry matters in the council against the English Parliament, met with so much opposition, that they abandoned their purpose, and the king signified his pleasure that they should not interfere in the business. When hostilities had actually commenced between the king and the parliament, Argyle was so far prevailed upon by the marquis of Hamilton, to trust the asseverations which accompanied his majesty's expressed wishes for peace, as to be willing to second his proposed attempt at negotiation with the Parliament, and he signed, along with Loudon, Warriston, and Henderson, tho i. 3 o 474 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. invitation, framed by the court party, to the queen to return from Holland, to assist in mediating a peace between his majesty and the two houses of Parlia- ment. '1 he battle of 'Edgehill, however, so inspirited the king, that he re- jected the offer on the pretence tliat he durst not hazard her person. In l(i i^, when, in compliance with the request of the Parliament of England, troops were raised by the Scottish estates, to aid the protestants of Ireland, Arg\le \v;ts nominated to a colonelcy in one of the regiments, and in the month of January, 1G14, he accompanied general Leslie, with the Scottish army, into England as chief of the committee of Parliament, but in a short time returned with tidings of the defeat of the marquis of Newcastle at Newburn. The ultra royalists, highly offended at the assistance afforded by the estates of Scotland, to the Parliament of England, had already planned and begun to execute different movements in the north, which they intended should either overthrow the Estates, or reduce them to the necessity of recalling their army from England for their own defence. The marquis of Huntly having received a commission from Cliarles, had already commenced hostilities, by making prisoners of the provost and magistrates of Aberdeen, and at the same time plundering -the town of all the arms and ammunition it contained. He also published a declaration of hos- tilities against the covenanters. Earl Marischal, apprized of this, summoned the committees of Angus and Mearns, and sent a message to Huntly to dismiss .his followers. Huntly, trusting to the assurances he had had from Montrose, Crawford, and Nithsdale of assistance from the south, and from Ireland, s.mt an insulting reply to the committee, requiring them to dismiss, and not interrupt the peace of the country. In the month of April, Argyle was despatched against him, with what troops he could raise for the occasion, and came unexpectedly upon him after his followers had plundered and set on fire the town of Montrose, whence they retreated to Aberdeen. Thither they were followed by Argyle, who, learn- ing that the laird of Haddow, with a number of his friends, had fortified them selves in the house of Killie, marched thither, and invested it with his army. Unwilling, however, to lose time by a regular siege, he sent a trumpeter offering pardon to every man in the garrison who should surrender, the laird of Haddow excepted. Seeing no means of escape, the garrison accepted the terms. Had- dow was sent to Edinburgh, brought to trial on a charge of treason, found guilty, and executed. Huntly, afraid of being sent to his old quarters in Edin- burgh castle, repaired to the Bog of (iight, accompanied only by two or three individuals of his own clan, whence he brought away some trunks filled with silver, gold, and apparel, which he intrusted to one of his followers, who, find- ing a vessel ready to sail for Caithness, shipped the trunks, and set off with them, leaving the marquis to shift for himself. The marquis, who had yet one thou- sand dollars, committed them to the care of another of his dependants, and tak- ing a small boat, set out in pursuit of the trunks. On landing in Sutherland he could command no better accommodation than a wretched ale-house. Next day he proceeded to Caithness, where he found lodgings with his cousin-german, Francis Sinclair, and most unexpectedly fell in with the runaway and his boxes, with which by sea he proceeded to Strathnaver, where he remained in close re- tirement for upwards of twelve months. In the meantime, about twelve hundred of the promised Irish auxiliaries, under Alaster Macdonald, landed on the island of Mull, where they captured some of the small fortresses, and, sailing for the mainland, they disembarked in Knoydart, where they attempted to raise some of the clans. Argyle, to whom this Alaster Macdonald was a mortal enemy, having sent round some ships of war from Leith, which seized the vessels that had transported them over, they were unable to leave the country, and he him- self, with a formidable force, hanging upon their rear, they were driven into ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 475 the interior, and traversed the wilds of Locliaber and Uadenoch, expectin* to meet a royal army under Montrose, though in what place they had no kn"ow- ledge. Macdonald, in order to strengthen them in numbers, liad sent through the fiery cross in various directions, though with only indifferent success, till Montrose at last met them, having found his way through the country in disguise all the way from Oxford, with only one or two attendants. Influenced by Mon- trose, the men of Athol, who were generally anti-covenanters, joined the royal standard in great numbers, and he soon found himself at the head of a formid- able army. His situation was not, however, promising. Argyle was in his rear, being in pursuit of the Irish, who were perfect banditti, and had committed ter- rible ravages upon Ins estates, and there were before him six or seven thousand men under lord Elcho, stationed at Perth. Elcho's troops, however, were only raw militia, officered by men who had never seen an engagement, and the lead- ers among them were not unjustly suspected of being disaffected to the cause. As the most prudent measure, he did not wait to be attacked, but went to meet Montrose, who was marching through Strathearn, having commenced his career by plundering the lands, and burning the houses of the clan Menzies. Eldio took up a position upon the plain of Tippermuir, where he was attacked by Montrose, and totally routed in the space of a few minutes. Perth fell at once into the hands of the victor, and was plundered of money, and whatever was valuable, and could be earned away. The stoutest young men he also impressed into the ranks, and seized upon all the horses fit for service. Thus strength- ened, he poured down upon Angus, where he received numerous reinforcements. Dundee he attempted, but finding there were troops in it sufficient to hold it out for some days, and dreading the approach of Argyle, who was still following him, he pushed north to Aberdeen. Here his covenanting rage had been bit- terly felt, and at his approach the committee sent off the public money and all their most valuable effects to Dunnottar castle. They at the same time threw up some rude fortifications, and had two thousand men prepared to give him a warm reception. Crossing the Dee by a ford, he at once eluded their fortifications and deranged their order of battle ; and issuing orders for an immediate attack, they were defeated, and a scene of butchery followed which has few parallels in the annals of civilized warfare. In the fields, the streets, or the houses, armed or unarmed, no man found mercy : the ragged they killed and stripped ; the well-dressed, for fear of spoiling their clothes, they stripped and killed. After four days employed in this manner, the approach of Argyle, whom they were not sufficiently numerous to combat, drove them to the north, where they intended to take refuge beyond the Spey. The boats, however, were all removed to the other side, and the whole force of Moray was assembled to dispute the passage. In this dilemma, nothing remained for 31ontrose but to take refuge among the hills, and his rapid movements enabled him to gain the wilds of Badenoch with the loss only of his artillery and heavy baggage, where he bade defiance to the approach of any thing like a regular army. After resting a few days, he again descended into Athol to recruit, having sent Macdonald into the Highlands on the same errand. From Athol he entered Angus, where he wasted the estates of lord Couper, and plundered the house of Dun, in which the inhabitants of Montrose had deposited their valuables, and which also afforded a supply of arms and artillery. Argyle, all this while, fol- lowed his footsteps with a superior army, but could never come up with him. He, however, proclaimed him a traitor, and offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds for his head. Having strengthened his army by forced levies in Atholj Montrose again crossed the Grampians, and spreading devastation along his line of march, attempted once more to raise the Gordons. In this he was 476 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. still unsuccessful, and at tlie castle of Fyvie, which he had taken, ^as ai last surprised by Argyle and the earl of Lothian, who, with an army of three thousand horse and foot, were within two miles of his camp, when he believed them to be on the other side of the Grampians. Here, had there been an\ tiling like management on the part of the army of the Estates, his career liad raise. Argyle, whose army was now greatly weakened by desertion, returned to Edinburgh and threw up his commission in disgust. The Estates, however, received him in the most friendly manner, and passed an act approving of his conduct. By the parliament which met this year, on the 4th of June, Argyle was named, along with the chancellor Loudoun, lords Balmerino, Yl'arriston, and others, as commissioners, to act in concert with the English parliament in their nego- tiations with the king ; but from the manner in which he was occupied, he must have been able to overtake a very small part of the duties included in the commission. Montrose no sooner found that Argyle Lad retired and left the field clear, than, to keep up the spirit of his followers, and to satiate his revenge, he marched them into Glenorchy, belonging to a near relation of Argyle, and in the depth of winter rendered the whole country one wide field of blood : nor was this destruction confined to Glenorchy ; it was extended through Argyle and Lorn to the very confines of Lochaber, not a house he was able to surprise being left unburned, nor a man unslaughtercd. Spalding adds, " he left not a four-footed beast in the haill country ; such as would not drive he houghed and slew, that they should never make stead." Having rendered the country a wilderness, he bent his way for Inverness, when he was informed that Argyle had collected an army of three thousand men, and had advanced as far as Inverlochy, on his march t6 the very place upon which lie himself was advancing. Montrose was no sooner informed of the circumstance, than, striking across the almost inaccessible wilds of Lochaber, he came, by a march of about six and thirty hours, upon the camp of Argyle at Inverlochy, and was within half a mile of it before they knew that there was an enemy within several days' march of them. The state of his followers did not admit of an immediate attack by Montrose ; but every thing was ready for it by the dawn of day, and with the dissolving mists of the morning. On the second of February, lb'45, Argyle, from his pinnace on the lake, whither he had retired on account of a hurt he had caught by a fall from his horse, which disabled him from fighting, beheld the total annihilation of his army, one luilf of it being literally cut to pieces, and the other dissipated among the adjoining mountains, or driven into the water. Unable to afford the smallest assistance to his discomfitted troops, he immediately hoisted sails and made for a place of safety. On the twelfth of the month, he appeared before the parliament, then sitting in Edinburgh, to which he related the tale of his own and their misfortune, in the best manner no doubt which the case could admit of. The circumstances, however, were such as no colouring could hide, and the Estates were certainly deeply affected. But the victory at Inverlochy, though JLS complete as victory can well be sup- posed, and gained with the loss too of only two or three men, was perhaps more pernicious to the victors than the vanquished. The news of it unhap- pily reached Charles at a time when he was on the point of accepting the terms of reconciliation offered to his parliament, which reconciliation, if effected, might liave closed the war for ever, and he no sooner heard ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 477 of this remarkable victory, than he resolved to reject them, and trust to continued hostilities for the means of obtaining a more advantageous treaty. Alontrose, also, whose forces were always reduced after a victory, as the High- landers were wont to go home to deposit their spoils, could take no other advantage of " the day of Inverlochy," than to carry on, upon a broader scale, and with less interruption, the barbarous system of warfare which political, religious, and feudal hostility had induced him to adopt. Instead of marching towards the capital, where he might have followed up his victory to the utter extinction of the administration of the Estates, he resumed his march along the course of the Spey into the province of Moray, and, issuing an order for all the men above sixteen and below sixty to join his standard, under the pain of military execution, proceeded to burn the houses and destroy the goods upon the estates of Grangehill, Brodie, Cowbin, Innes, Ballendalloch, Foyness, and Pitchash. He plundered also the village of Garmouth and the lands of Burgle, Lethen, and Duft'us, and destroyed all the boats and nets upon the Spey. Argyle having thrown up his commission as general of the army, which was given to general Baillie, he was now attached to it only as member of a committee appointed by the parliament to direct its movements, and in this capacity was present at the battle of Kilsyth, August 15th, 1645, the most dis- astrous of all the six victories of Mont-rose to the Covenanters, upwards of six thousand men being slain on the field of battle and in the pursuit This, however, was the last of the exploits of the great marquis. There being no more detachments of militia in the country to oppose to him, general David Leslie, with some regiments of horse, were recalled from the army in England, who surprised and defeated him at Fhiliphaugh, annihilating his little army, and, according to an ordinance of parliament, hanging up without distinction ab 1 the Irish battalions. In the month of February, 1646, Argyle was sent over to Ireland to bring home the Scottish troops that had been sent to that country to assist in repres- sing the turbulence of the Catholics. He returned to Edinburgh in the month of May following. In the meantime, Alister Macdonald, the coadjutor ol Montrosa, had made another tour through his country of Argyle, giving to the sword and the devouring flame wliatever had escaped in the former inroads, so that upwards of twelve hundred of the miserable inhabitants, to escape absolute starvation, were compelled to emigrate, under one of their chieftains, Ardinglass, into Menteith, where they attempted to settle themselves upon the lands of the malio-nant. But scarcely liad they made the attempt, when they were attack- ed by Inchbrackie, with a party of Athol men, and chased beyond the Forth near Stirling, where they were joined by the marquis, who earned them into Lennox, and quartered them upon the lands of lord Napier, till he obtained an act to embody them into a regiment, to be stationed in different parts ot the Highlands, and a grant from parliament for a supply of provisions for lus castle So deplorably liad his estates been wasted by the inroads of Montrose ai Macdonald, that a sum of money was voted him for the support of himseil family and for paying annual rents to some of the more necessitous credi upon'his estates. A collection was at the same time ordered through churches of Scotland, for the relief of his poor people who had been plund bv the Irish. In the month of July, 1 646, when the king had surrendered lum- self to the Scottish army, Argyle went up to Newcastle to wait upon and pay h respects to him. On (he 3d of August following, he was sent up to London along with London, the chancellor, and the earl of Dunfermhne to treat will the parliament of England, concerning a mitigation of the art.cles they 1 nrJuited to the king" with some of which he was not at all saUshed. He , 478 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. also on this occasion the bearer of a secret commission from the king, to consult with the duke of Richmond and the marquis of Hertford concerning tlie pro- priety of the Scottish army and parliament declaring for him. Both of these noblemen totally disapproved of the scheme, as they were satisfied it would be the entire ruin of his interests. In this matter, Argyle certainly did not act with perfect integrity; and it was probably a feeling of conscious duplicity which prevented him from being present at any of the committees concerning the king's person, or any treaty for the withdrawal of the Scottish army, or the payment of its arrears. The opinion of these two noblemen, however, he faithfully reported to his majesty, who professed to be satisiied, but spoke of adopting some other plan, giving evident proof tliat his pretending to accept conditions was a mere pretence a put oft till he might be able to lay hold uf some lucky turn in the chapter of accidents. It was probably from a painful anticipation of the fatal result of the king's pertinacity, that Argyle, when he returned to Edinburgh and attended the parliament, which assembled on the 3d of November, demanded and obtained an explicit approval of all that he had transacted, as their accredited commissioner ; and it must not be lost sight of, that, for all the public business he had been engaged in, except what was voted him in consequence of his great losses, he never hitherto had received one farthing of salary. When the Engagement, as it was called, was entered into by the marquis of Hamilton, and other Scottish presbyterian loyalists, Argyle opposed it, because, from what he had been told by the duke of Richmond and the marquis of Hertford, when he liad himself been half embarked in a scheme somewhat similar, he believed it would be the total ruin of his majesty's cause. '1 he event completely justified his fears. By exasperating the sectaries and republicans, it was the direct and immediate cause of the death of the king. On the march of the Engagers into England, Argyle, Eglinton, Cassilis, and Lothian, inarched into Edinburgh at the head of a great multitude of people whom they had raised, before whom the committee of Estates left the city, and the irre- mediable defeat of the Engagers, which instantly followed, entirely sinking the credit of the party, they never needed to return, the reins of government falling into the hands of Argyle, Warriston, London, and others of the more zealous party of the presbyterians. The flight of the few Engagers who reached their native land, was followed by Cromwell, who came all the way to Berwick, uitli the purpose apparently of invading Scotland. Argyle, in the month of .September or October, 1<>48, went to Mordington, where he had an interview with that distinguished individual, whom, along with general Lambert, he conducted to Edinburgh, where he was received in a way worthy of his high fame, and every thing between the two nations was settled in the most amicable manner, the Solemn League and Covenant being renewed, the Engagement proscribed, and all who had been concerned in it summoned to appear before parliament, \\hich was appointed to meet at Edinburgh on the 4th of January, lu'4'J. It has been, without the least particle of evidence, asserted that Argyle, in the various interviews he held with Cromwell at this time, agreed tliat diaries should be executed. The losses to which Argyle was afterwards subjected, and the hardships he endured for adhering to Charles' interests after he was laid in his grave, should, in the absence of all evidence to the contrary, be a sufficient attestation of his loyalty, not to speak of the parliament, of which he \vas unquestionably the most influential individual, in the ensuing month of February proclaiming Charles II. king of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, &:c. than which nothing could be more offensive to the then existing government ol England. In sending over the deputation that waited upon Charles in Holland ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 479 in the spring of 1649, Argyle was heartily concurring, though he had been not a little disgusted with his associates in the administration, on account of the execution of his brother-in-law, the marquis of Huntly, whom he in vain exerted all his influence to save. It is also said that he refused to assist at the trial, or to concur in the sentence passed upon the marquis of Montrose, in the month of .May, 1650, declaring that he was too much a party to be a judge in tliat matter. Of the leading part he performed in the installation of Charles II., upon whose head he placed the crown at Scone on the 1st of January, 1G51, we have not room to give any particular account. Of the high consequence in which his services were held at the time, there needs no other proof than the report that the king intended marrying one of his daughters. For the defence of the king and kingdom, against both of whom Cromwell was now ready to lead all his troops, he, as head of the Committee of Estates, made the most vigorous exertions. Even after the defeat at Dunbar, and the consequent ascendancy of the king's personal interests, he adhered to his majesty with unabated zeal and diligence, of which Charles seems to have been sensible at the time, as the following letter, in his own hand writing, which he delivered to Argyle under his sign manual, abundantly testifies: " Having taken into consideration the faithful endeavours of the marquis of Argyle for restoring me to my just rights, and the happy settling of my dominions, I am desirous to let the world see how sensible I am of his real respect to me by some particular marks of my favour to him, by which they may see the trust and confidence which I repose in him: and particularly, I do promise that I will make him duke of Argyle, knight of the garter, and one of the gentlemen of my bed- chamber, and this to be performed when he shall think it fit. And I do farther promise him to hearken to his counsels, [passage worn out}. Whenever it shall please God to restore me to my just rights in England, I sliall see him paid the 40,000 sterling which is due to him; all which I promise to make good to him upon the word of a king. CHARLES REX, St Johnston, September ^ith, 1650." When Charles judged it expedient to lead the Scottish army into England, in the vain hope of raising the cavaliers and moderate presbyterians in his favour, Argyle obtained leave to remain at home, on account of the illness of his lady. After the whole hopes of the Scots were laid low at Worcester, September 3d, 1651, he retired to Inverary, where he held out against the triumphant troops of Cromwell for a whole year, till, falling sick, he was sur- prised by general Dean, and carried to Edinburgh. Having received orders from Monk to attend a privy council, he Mas entrapped to be present at the ceremony of proclaiming Cromwell lord Protector. A paper was at the same time tendered him to sign, containing his submission to the government, as settled without king or house of lords, which he absolutely refused, though afterwards, when he was in no condition to struggle farther, he signed a pro- mise to live peaceably under that government. He was always watched, however, by the ruling powers, and never was regarded by any of the autho- rities as other than a concealed loyalist. When Scotland was declared by Cromwell to be incorporated with England, Argyle exerted himself, in opposi- tion to the council of state, to have Scotsmen alone elected to serve in jarlia- ment for North Britain, of which Monk complained to Thurlow, in a letter from Dalkeith, dated September 30, 1658. Under Richard he was himself elected for the county of Aberdeen, and took his seat accordingly in the house, where he wrought most effectually for the service of the king, by making that breach through which lu's majesty entered. On the Restoration, Argyle's best friends advised him to keep out of the way on account of his compliances with the usurpation ; but he judged it more honourable and honest to go and congratu- 480 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. Inte his majesty upon so happy a turn in his affairs. To this he must Iinve been misled from the promissory note of kindness which he held, payable on demand, as well as by some flattering expressions which Charles had made use of regard- ing him to his son, lord Lorn ; but when he arrived at Whitehall, July 8, IGfiO the king no sooner heard his name announced, than, " with an angry stamp r{ the foot, he ordered Sir William Fleming to execute his orders," which were to carry him to the Tower. To the Tower he was carried accordingly, where he lay till the month of December, when he was sent down to Leitli aboard a man-of-war, to stand his trial before the high court of parliament. While con- fined in the Tower, the marquis made application to have the affidavits of several persons in England taken respecting some matters of fact, when he WPS con- cerned in the public administration before the usurpation, which, had justice been the object of the prosecution against him, could not have been denied. Revenge, however, being the object, facts might have happened to prove inconvenient, and the request was flatly refused. On his arrival at Leith, he was conveyed to the castle of Edinburgh, and, preparatory to his being brought to trial, the president of the committee for bills, on the eighteenth of January, reported to the parliament that a supplica- tion had been presented to them by the laird of Lament, craving warrant to cite the marquis of Argyle, with some others, to appear before parliament, to answer for crimes committed by him and them as specified in the bill given in. Some little opposition was made to this; but it was carried by a vast plurality to grant wan-ant according to the prayer of the petition. This charge could net be intended to serve any other purpose than to raise a prejudice in the public mind against the intended victim; for it was a charge which not a few of the managers themselves knew well to be false. Middleton could have set the ques- tion at once to rest, as he had had a deeper hand in many of the cruelties com- plained of than Argyle, for he had acted under general Leslie, in suppressing the remains of Montrose's army, and, much nearer home than the islands, namely at Kincardine house, belonging to Montrose, had shot twelve cavaliers without any ceremony, sending the remainder to be hanged at Edinburgh, all which, be it observed, was in defence of a party of Argyle's people who had been driven to seek refuge in Lennox, and was no doubt one of the items in the general charge. Put the charge generally referred to the clearing of his own territories of Alister Macdonald and his Irish bands by Leslie, who. in reducing the strengths belonging to the loyalists in the north, had, conformably to the orders of parliament, shot or hanged every Irishman he found in them without ceremony. Sir James Turner, who was upon this expedition, and has left an account of it in his Memoirs, acquits Argyle of all blame, in so far as concerns the seizure of the castle of Dunavertie, one of the cases that has been most loudly complained of, though he fastens a stain on the character of Air John Nevoy, the divine who accompanied the expedition, who, he says, took a pleasure in wading through the blood of the victims. A small extract will show that Leslie confined himself strictly to the parliamentary order, which was perhaps no more severe than the dreadful character of the times had ren- dered necessary. " From Ila we boated over to Jura, a horrid isle, and a habita- tion fit for deer and wild beasts, and so from isle to isle till we come to Mull, which is one of the best of the Hebrides. Here Maclean saved his lands with the loss of his reputation, if he ever had any : he gave up his strong castles to Leslie ; gave his eldest son for hostage of his fidelity, and, which was unchris- tian baseness in the lowest degree, he delivered up fourteen very pretty Irish- men, who had been all along faithful to him, to the lieutenant general, who immediately caused hang them all. It was net well done to demand them from ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 481 Maclean ; but inexcusably ill dene in him to betray them. Here I cannot for- get one Donald Campbell, fleshed in blood from his very infancy, who, with all imaginable violence, pressed that the whole clan Maclean should be put to the sword, nor could lie be commanded to forbear his bloody suit by the lieutenant general and two major generals, and with somo difficulty was he commanded silence by his chief, the marquis of Argyle. For my part, I said nothing, for indeed 1 did not care though he had prevailed in his suit, the delivering of tlie Irish liad so much irritated me against that whole clan and name." Argyle was brought before parliament on the 13th of February 1661. His indictment, consisting of fourteen articles, comprehended the history of all the transactions tliai had taken place in Scotland since 1638. The whole procedure, on one side of the question, during all that time, had already been declared rebellion, and each individual concerned was of course liable to the cliarge of treason. Middleton, lord high commissioner to parliament, eager to possess his estate, of which he doubted not he would obtain the gift, conducted the trial in a man- ner not only inconsistent with justice, but with the dignity and the decency that ought ever to characterise a public character. From the secret conversations he had held with Cromwell, Middleton drew the conclusion, that the interruption of the treaty of Newport and the execution of Charles had been the fruit of their joint deliberations. He was defended on this point by Sir John Gihnour, pre- sident of the court of -Session, with such force of argument as to compel the re- luctant parliament to exculpate him from all blame in the matter of the king's death ; and, after having exhibited the utmost cpntempt for truth, and a total disregard of character or ciedit, provided they could obtain their point, the destruction of the pannel, the crown lawyers were at length obliged to fix on his compliance with the English during the usurpation, as the only species of treason that could at all be made to affect him. Upon this point there was not one of his judges who had not been equally, and some of them much more guilty than himself. " How could I suppose,'' said the marquis, with irresistible effect in iiis defence on this point, " that 1 was acting criminally, when the learned gentle- man who now acts as his majesty's advocate, took the same oaths to the common- wealth with myself ."' He was not less successful in replying to every iota of his indictment, in addition to which he gave in a signed supplication and sub- mission to his majesty, which was regarded just as little as his defences. The moderation, the good sense, and the magnanimity, however, which he displayed, joined to his innocence of the crimes charged against him, wrought so strongly upon the house, that great fears were entertained tliat, after all, he would be ac- quitted ; and to counteract the influence of his two sons, lord Lome and lord Neil Campbell, who were both in London, exerting themselves as far as they could in his behalf, Glencairn, Rothes, and Sliarpe were sent up to court, where, when it was found that the proof was thought to be defective, application uas made to general Monk, who furnished them with some of the marquis of Ar- gyle's private letters, which were sent down post to Middleton, who laid them before parliament, and by this means obtained a sentence of condemnation against the noble marquis, on Saturday the 25th, and he was executed accordingly on Monday the 27th of May, 1GG1. Than the behaviour of this nobleman during his trial, and after his receiving sentence of death, nothing could be more dignified or becoming the cliaracter of a Christian. Conscious of his integrity, he defended his character and conduct with firmness and magnanimity, but with great gentleness and the highest respect for author- ity. After receiving his sentence, when brought back to the common jail, his excellent lady wits waiting for him, and, embracing him, wept bitterly ^exclaim- ing, " the Lord will requite it ;" but, calm and composed, he said, " i'crbeor ; 482 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. truly, I pity them ; they know not what they are doing ; they may shut me in where they please, but they cannot shut out God from me. For my part, I am as content to be here as in the castle, and as content in the castle as in the Tower of London, and as content there as when at liberty, and I hope to be as content on the scaffold as any of them all.'' His short time till Monday he spent in serenity and cheerfulness, and in the proper exercises of a dying Christian. To some of the ministers he said that they would shortly envy him for having got before them, for he added, ' my skill fails me, if you who are ministers will not either suffer much, or sin much; for, though you go along with those men in part, if you do it not in all things, you are but where you were, and so must suffer ; and if you go not at all with them, you shall but suf- fer." On the morning of his execution, he spent two hours in subscribing papers, making conveyances, and forwarding other matters of business relating to his estate ; and while so employed, he suddenly became so overpowered with a feeling of divine goodness, according to contemporary authority, that he was unable to contain himself, and exclaimed, " I thought to have concealed the Lord's good- ness, but it will not do : I am now ordering my affairs, and God is sealing my charter to a better inheritance, and saying to me, ' Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins are forgiven thee.'" He wrote the same day a most affecting letter to the king, recommending to his protection his wife and children. " lie came to the scaffold," says Burnet, " in a very solemn, but undaunted manner, accom- panied with many of the nobility and some ministers. He spoke for half an hour with a great appearance of serenity. Cunningham, his physician, told me that he touched his pulse, and it did then beat at the usual rate, calm and strong." It is related, as another proof of the resolution of Argyle, in the Last trying scene, that, though he had eaten a whole partridge at dinner, no vestige of it was found in his stomach after death ; if he had been much afiected by the an- ticipation of death, his digestion, it may be easily calculated, could not have been so good. His head was struck off by the instrument called the Maiden, and affixed on the west end of the Tolbooth, where that of Montrose had been till very lately perched ; a circumstance that very sensibly marks the vicissi- tudes of a time of civil dissension. His body was conveyed by his friends to Uunoon, and buried in the family sepulchre at Kilmun. Argyle, with few qualities to captivate the fancy, has always been esteemed by the people of Scotland as one of the most consistent and meritorious of their array of patriots. For the sake of his exemplary moral and religious charac- ter, and his distinguished exertions in the resistance to the measures of Charles I., as well as his martyrdom in that cause, they have overlooked a quality gen- erally obnoxious to their contempt his want of courage in the field which caused him, throughout the whole of the transactions of the civil war, to avoid personal contact with danger, though often at the head of large bodies of troop*. The habits of Argyle in private life were those of an eminently and sincerely pious man. In Mr Wodrow's diary of traditionary collections, which remains in manuscript in the Advocates' Library, it is related, under May 9, 170^, upon the credit of a clergyman, the last survivor of the General Assembly of lu'51, that his lordship used to rise at five, and continue in private till eight : besides family worship, and private prayer, morning and evening, he prayed with his lady morning and evening, in the presence of his own gentleman and her gentlewoman; he never went abroad, though but for one night, without taking along with him his writing-standish, a bible, and Newman's Concor- dance. Upon the same authority, we relate the following anecdote : " After the coronation of king Charles II. at Scone, he waited a long time for an op- portunity of dealing freely with his majesty on religious matters, and particular- ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 483 ly about his suspected disregard of the covenant, and his encouragement of indignant., and other sins. One sabbath night, after supper, he went into the closet, and began to converse with him on these topics, diaries was eemingly sensible, and they came at length to prav and mourn together till >r three m the morning. When he came home to his lady, she was sur- r,scd, and told him she never knew him so untimeous. He said he never had liad such a sweet night an the world, and told her all -what liberty he had in prayer, and how much convinced the king Mas. She said plainly that that ght would cost li,,n his head which came to pass." Mr Wodrow also men- ions that during the Glasgow Assembly, Henderson and other ministers spent any nights in prayer, and conference with the marquis of Argyle, and lie i his conversion, or his knowledge of it, from those times. His lordship was .named to Margaret, second daughter of William, second earl of Morton and by her left two sons and three daughters. OA31PHELL, ARCHIBALD, ninth Ear! of Argyle, son of the preceding, Mas an equally unfortunate, though less distinguished political character, in the happiest era of Scottish history. H e was educated under the eye of Jiis father, and, at an early period of life, Mas highly distinguished for his per- sonal accomplishments. After going through the schools, he Mas sent to tra- vel on the continent, and, during the years 1647, 1648, and 1649, spent the greater part of his time in France and Italy. He appears to have returned to Scotland about the close of 1649, and we find him, in 1653, after Charles II. had arrived in Scotland, appointed colonel of one of the regiments of foot-guards, that were embodied on tliat occasion, which he held by commission from the king, refusing, from a principle of loyalty, to act under a commission from the parliament He Mas present at the battle of Dunbar, fought in the month of September, 1653, when he displayed great bravery ; and where his lieutenant- colonel, Wallace, who aftenvards commanded the covenanters at Pentland, Mas taken prisoner. After the battle of Worcester, he still continued in amis, and kept up a party in the Highlands ready to serve his majesty on any favourable opportunity that might occur. Nor did he hesitate, for this purpose, to act along with the most deadly enemies of his house. In 1654, he joined the earl of Glencairn, with a thousand foot, and fifty horse, contrary to advice of his father, who saw no possibility of any good being done by that ill-advised armament. After having remained, along with this assemblage of cavaliers, for a fortnight, finding his situation neither safe nor comfortable among so many Murrays, Gor- dons, and Macdonalds, he withdrew from them, taking the road for the barracks of liuthven, and was pursued by Macdonald of Glengary, Mho Mould certainly have slain him, had he not escaped with his horse, leaving his foot to shift for themselves. Glengary, liaving missed lord Lome, Mould have revenged himself by killing his people, but \vas prevented by Glencairn, Mho took from them an oath of fidelity, and carried them back to the camp ; whence they, in a short time, found means to escape in small bodies, till there was not one of them remaining. On this occasion, he carried a commission of lieutenant-general from Charles II., Mhicli rendered him so obnoxious to Cromwell, that he excepted him from his Act of Grace, published in the month of April this year. Lord Lome was soon after this necessitated to take refuge in one of his remote islands, with only four or five attendants ; and, seeing no prospect of any deliverance, submitted to the Knglish in despair. In November of the following year, 1655, Monk compelled him to find security for his peaceable behaviour, to the amount of five thousand pounds sterling. He was, notwithstanding of all this, constantly Matched, par- ticularly by the lord Broghill, Mho had the meanness to corrupt even his body servants, and constitute them spies upon their master's conduct. In the spring 484: ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. of 1C 57, Monk committed him to prison, and Rroghill was earnest to have him carried to England, for the more effectually preventing his intrigues among the royalists. Shortly after the Hestoration, he waited on his majesty, Charles II., with a letter from his father, and was received so graciously, that the marquis was induced to go up to London upon the same errand as his son, but was sent to the Tower without an audience. During the time that Middleton was practis- ing against his father the marquis, lord Lome exerted himself with great zeal, and though he failed in rescuing his beloved parent from the toils into which he had been hunted, he left a favourable impression on the mind of Charles with regard to himself, and, in place of bestowing the estates of Argyle upon Middleton, as that profligate fondly expected, he was induced to restore them, as well as the original title of earl, to the rightful heir. Nor was this all ; when, to the astonishment of all the world, he was, by the Scottish parliament, con- demned to death, under the odious statute respecting leasing-making, he was again saved by the royal favour, to the confusion of his enemies. For some considerable time after this, there is little to be told of the earl of Argyle, and that little no way creditable to his fame. He had his share of the preferments and of the dirty work of the period, in which he fouled his hands more than was meet, as a Highlander would say, for the son of his father. It was on the 29th of June, 1681, tliat Argyle gave his vote in the council against Donald Cargill ; and the very next day the parliament sat down, which framed under the direction of the bigoted James VII., then duke of York, and commissioner to the Scottish parliament, that bundle of absurdities known by the name of the Test, which was imposed without mercy upon all, especially such as lay under any suspicion of presbyterianism. This absurd oath was refused by many of the episcopal ministers, who relinquished their places rather than debauch their consciences by swearing contradictions. Some took it with explanations, among whom was Argyle, who added the following ; that, as the parliament never meant to impose contradictory oaths, he took it as far as consistent with itself and the protestant faith, but that he meant not to bind or preclude himself in his station, in a lawful manner, from wishing or endeavouring any alteration which he thought of advantage to the church or state, and not repugnant to the protestant religion and his loyalty ; and this he understood to be a part of his oath. Of the propriety of taking the test, even with this explanation, in a moral point of view, some doubt may reasonably be entertained. With such an explanation, why might not any oath be taken that ever was framed, and what can save such swearing from the charge of being a taking of God's name in vain ; for an oath so explained is after all not an oath in the proper sense and meaning of the word. This explanation he submitted to the duke of York, who seemed to be perfectly satisfied ; but he had no sooner put it in practice than he was indicted for his explanation, as containing treason, leasing, and perjury, and, by a jury of his peel's, brought in guilty of the two first charges. This was on the 13th of December, 1681, and on the night of the 20th, fearing, as he had good reason, that his life would be taken, he made his escape out of the castle, disguised as a page, and bearing up the train of his step-daughter, lady- Sophia Lindsay, sister to the earl of Balcarras. On the third day after sen- tence of death was pronounced upon him, Fountainhall says, " '1 here was a great outcry against the criminal judges and their timorous dishonesty. The marquis of Montrose was chancellor of this assize. Sir George Lockhart called it lucrative treason to the advantage of church and state ; and admired how a man could he condemned as a traitor for saying he would endeavour all the amendment he can to the advantage of church and state." Even those who thought the words deserved some lesser punishment, called it diabolical alchemy, AHCHIBALT) CAMPBELL. 485 to screw them into treason. Lord Halifax told Charles himself, that he knew not the Scottish law, but the English law would not have hanged a dog for such a crime. On his escape from the castle, Argyle, by the direction of Mr John Scott, minister of Hawick, rode straight to the house of Pringle of Torwoodlee, who sent his servant along with him to the house of Mr William Veitch, who conducted him to Clapwell, in Derbyshire; where, becoming afraid from the alarm that had been everywhere given, Mr Veiteh thought it prudent to advise with Lockyer, an old Cromwellian captain, who generously offered his services to conduct Argyle safely to London; which he did, bringing him first to Battersea, four miles above London, to Mr Smith's, a sugar baker's house, whose wife was a very pious and generous gentlewoman. They were rich, ana had no children ; of- course they were able to do a great deal in the way of charity, without hurting themselves. They acquainted the lady with the earl's secret, but concealed it from her husband, and his lordship passed for an ordi- nary Scottish gentleman of the name of Hope. The lady, however, in a day or two, sent to one of her agents in the city to provide two chambers at a good distance from one another, where two friends of her's might be quiet and retired for a while ; and Argyle and Veitch were sent to town by night to the house of Mr Holmes, the lady's agent, to be directed to their lodgings. None of them knew Holmes ; but the moment Holmes came into the room which they had been shown, he took Argyle in his arms, saying, my dear lord Argyle, you are most welcome to me. Argyle, in astonishment, and not without some visi- ble concern, inquired how he knew him. 1 knew you, said Holmes, since that day 1 took you prisoner in the Highlands, and brought you to the castle of Edinburgh. But now we are on one side, and I will venture all that is dear to me to save you. So he carried them to their several lodgings ; those of Argyle being known to no one but Mr Veitch and Holmes. As soon as the noise about his escape was over, Mrs Smith brought them both out to a new house they had moved to at Brentford ; Argyle passing for a Mr Hope, and Veitch for a captain Fabes. Here there were frequent meetings of noblemen, gentlemen, and rich merchants, with a view of devising means for preventing the nation from falling into slavery ; but the whole ended in the discovery of the Rye-house plot, which occasioned the apprehending of Mr William Carstairs, Mr Spence, and Baillie of Jerviswood ; the two former of whom were put to the torture, and the latter executed in the most cruel manner. Upon the appearance of the plot being discovered, Argyle went over to Holland ; and Mrs Smith, who was deep in the plot also, persuaded her husband to emigrate to that country from general motives, for he was ignorant of the plot; and they continued to live together, taking up their abode at Utrecht. Veitch, happily, when the search was made for them in London, had departed for Scotland ; and, after hiding for some time in the best manner he could, he also stole over to Holland. There he met with Monmouth, Argyle, the earl of Melville, lord Polwart, Torwoodlee, James Stuart, and many others similarly situated, who all took a deep interest in the plan now formed for invading both kingdoms at the same time, Monmouth to lead the attack upon England, and Argyle that upon Scotland, them," says Veitch, who seems to have been quite familiar with the whole plan, " had great promises sent them of assistance, but it turned to nothing, and i wonder; for the one part kept not their promises, and the other followed not the measures contrived and concerted at Amsterdam, April the 17th, 1 The persons present at this meeting were Argyle, and his son Charles Campbell, Cochrane ofOchiltree, Hume of Polwart, Pringle of Torwoodlee, Denholm o Westshields, Hume of Bassendean, Cochrane of Waterside, Mr George U isheart, William Cleknd, James Stuart, and Gilbert Elliot. Mr Veitch says, he brought 486 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. old president Stairs to the meeting with much persuasion ; and he gave bond for one thousand pounds to Madam Smith, whose husband was now dead ; and she lent out six dr seven thousand more to Argyle and others for carry ing on the enterprise. Having made all necessary arrangements, so far as was in their power, and dispatched Messrs Barclay and Veitch, Cleland and Torwoodlce, to different parts of Scotland to prepare for their reception, Argyle and his com- pany went on board their fleet of three ships, the Anna, Sophia, and David, lying off* the Vlie, on the 28th of April ; and, with a fair wind, set sail for Scotland, and in tliree days approached the Orkneys. At Kirkwall, most unfortun- ately, Spence, Argyle's secretary, and Blackadder, his physician, went on shore, were instantly apprehended by the bishop and sent up to Edinburgh, which alarmed the government, and gave them time to prepare for the attack which they liad heard of, but of which they were now certain. Sailing round to Ar- gyle's country, his son was landed, who sent through the fiery cross, but with no great effect. Finding tliat they were pursued by a frigate, they put into a oivek and landed their arms and stores at the old castle of Allangreg. In the mean- time, the marquis of Athol came against them with a considerable force, by whom they were drawn away from the castle, leaving only one hundred and fifty men to defend it in case of an attack. Being attacked, the small garrison iled, and the whole of their provisions and stores fell into the hands of the c-ncm). All this was discouraging enough ; but, wliat was worse, they were not agreed among themselves, nor was the country agreed to take part with them. The suffering presbyterians would have nothing to do with Argyle, with whom they were highly offended, for the part he had hitherto acted, and the declaration he emitted did not give them great hopes of that which was yet to come. In short, it was soon evident that they would be obliged to separate, and every man shift for himself in the best manner he could. Disappointed in the Highlands, it w;is proposed to try the Lowlands ; but they had wandered in the Highlands till the government forces, under Athol, Gordon, and Dumbarton, had cut off their com- munication with the disaffected parts of the country, and even cut them off from the possibility of escape. It was at last, however, resolved,, that they should march upon Glasgow ; and they crossed the water of Leven three miles above Dumbarton, on the night of the 16th of June. Marching next morning towards Kilniaronock, in the hope of finding some provisions, of which they were in ab- solute want, they discovered a party of horse, and stood to their arms, but the party they had observed being only a small body of horsemen not sufficiently strong to attack them, they passed on. On setting their watch the same night, they were alarmed again by a party of the king's forces. Attempting a night- march to Glasgow, they wandered into a moss, where they were so broken and siattered that, in the morning, there were not above five hundred of them together. All hope of success was now over. Sir John Cochrane and Sir Patrkfe Hume crossed the Clyde, with about one hundred and fifty men ; and Argyle refusing to follow them, they inarched to Muirdykc, where they were attacked by lord Ross, whom they repulsed in a very gallant manner, but were under the necessity of separating shortly after. Argyle, thus left to himself, despatched Sir Duncan Campbell and two Duncansons, father and son, to his own country, to attempt raising new levies ; and repaired himself to the house of an old servant, where he calculated upon a temporary asylum, but was peremptorily denied entrance. In consequence of this lie crossed the Clyde, attended only by one companion. At the ford of Inchinnan they were stopped by a party of militia men. Fullarton, the name of Argyle's companion, used every means he could think of to save his general, who was habited as a plain country man, and whom he passed for his guide. Seeing them determined to go after his guide, as he ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. 487 called him, he offered to surrender without a blow, provided they did not hurt the poor man who was conducting him. These terms they accepted, but did not adhere to; two of their number going after Argyle, who beii% on horseback, grappled with them, till one of them and himself came to the ground. He then presented his pocket pistol, when the two retired, but other five coming up, knock- ed him down with their swords, and seized him. When they found who it was they had made prisoner, they were exceedingly sorry, but they durst not let him go. Fullarton, perceiving the stipulation on which he had surrendered broken, snatched at the sword of one of them in order to take vengeance upon his per- fidious opponents, but, failing in his attempt, he too was overpowered and made prisoner. Renfrew was the first place that was honoured with the presence of this noble captive ; whence, on the 20th of June, he was led in triumph into Edinburgh. The order of the council was particular and peremptory, that he should be led bareheaded in the midst of Graham's guards witli their matches cocked, with his hands tied behind his back, and preceded by the common hang- man ; and that he might be more exposed to those insults which the unfeeling vulgar are ever ready to heap upon the unfortunate, it was specially directed that he should be led to the castle, which was to be the place of his confinement, by a circuitous route. All this, however, while it manifested the native baseness of the Scottish rulers and the engrained malevolence of their hearts, only served to display more strongly the heroic dignity, the meekness, the patience, and the unconquerable fortitude which animated the bosom of their unfortunate victim; and it tended in no small degree to hasten that catastrophe which all this studied severity was intended to avert. The Scottish parliament, on the llth of June, sent an address to the king- ; wherein, after commending his majesty in their usual manner for his immeasurable gifts of prudence, courage, and conduct ; and loading Argyle, whom they style an hereditary traitor, with every species of abuse, and with every crime, particularly that of ingratitude for the favours which he had received, as well from his majesty as from his predecessor ; they implore his majesty to show him no favour ; and that his family, the heritors, the preachers, &c. who have joined him, may for ever be declared incapable of mercy, or of bearing any honour or estate in the kingdom ; and all subjects discharged, under the pains of treason, to intercede for them in any manner of way. Accordingly, the following letter, with the royal signature, and counter- signed by lord 3Iilford, secretary of state for Scotland, was despatched to tho council at Edinburgh, and by them entered and registered on the 2Dth of June. " Whereas, the late earl of Argyle is, by the providence of God, fallen into our power, it is our will and pleasure, that you take all ways to know from him those things which concern our government most; as, his assisters with men, arms, and money, his associates and correspondents, his designs, c. but this must be done so as no time may be lost in bringing him to condign punishment, by causing him to be denounced as a traitor within the space of three da)s, after this sliall come to your hands, an account of which, with what he shall confess, you shall send immediately to our secretaries, for which this shall be your war- rant." James, who, while he was viceroy in Scotland, attended the infliction of torture upon the unhappy victims of his tyranny, and frequently called for an other touch, watrhing, at the same time, the unhappy victim with the eager curiosity of a philosophical experimenter, evidently, by this letter, intended that it should have been applied to Argyle. " It is our will and pleasure, tliat you take all ways to know from him, &c." seems positively to enjoin it ; and when we reflect that torture was at the time in common use, and that the men to whom this order was addressed were in the habit of practising it, we mi^ht almost say, every day, it is somewhat of a mystery how he escaped it. Certain 483 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL. it is, however, that he did escape it, but how will, in all probability, never be known. Tliat he did not escape it by any undue disclosures, is equally cer- tain. Tliat they* had received such orders he was told, and of their readiness to obey them, he had too many proofs ; yet, when examined in private by Queens- berry, he gave no information with respect to his associates in England ; he also denied that he had concerted his design with any persons in Scotland ; but he avowed boldly, and with the utmost frankness, tliat his hopes of success were founded on the cruelty of the administration, and such a disposition in the peo- ple to revolt as he conceived to be the natural consequence of oppression, lie owned, at the same time, that he liad laid too much weight upon this principle. Writing, too, to a friend, just before his examination, he has these words : u What may liave been discovered from any paper tliat may have been taken, he knows not. Otherwise, he has named none to their disadvantage." Perhaps it w;is to atone for their neglect with regard to the torture, tliat the council ordered his execution on the very next day, although they had three to choose upon ; and, to make the triumph of injustice complete, it was ordered upon the iniquitous sentence of 1682. The warning was short, but it must have been, in some de- gree, anticipated; and he received it with the most perfect composure, lie possessed a laitli full of assurance that triumphed over all his alilictions, and a hope tliat breathed immortality. The morning of his execution was spent in religious exercises, and in writing short notices to friends. He had his dinner before he left the castle, at the usual hour, at which he discoursed with those that were along with 31r (Jharteris and others, with cheerful and becoming gravity. After dinner he retired, as \xas his custom, to his bedchamber, where it is recorded he slept quietly for about a quarter of an hour. While he was in bed, one of the members of the council came, and wished to speak with him. Being told that the earl was asleep, and had left orders not to be disturbed, lie seemed to think tliat it was only a shift to avoid further questionings, and the door being thrown open, he beheld, in a sweet and tranquil slumber, the man who, by the doom of himself and his fellows, was to die within the space of two short hours. Struck with the sight, he left the castle with the utmost precipitation ; and entering the house of a friend that lived near by, threw himself on the first bed that presented itself. His friend natu- rally concluding that he was ill, offered him some wine, which he refused, say- ing, ' No, no, tiiat will not help me I have been at Argyle, and saw him sleep- ing as pleasantly as ever man did, but as for me ." The name of the person to whom this anecdote relates is not mentioned, but Wodrow says he liad it from the most unquestionable authority. After his short repose, he was brought to the high council-house, from which is dated the letter to his wife, and thence to the place of execution. On the scaftbld he discoursed with Mr Annanil, a minis- ter appointed by the government to attend him, and with Mr (Jharteris, both of whom lie desired to pray for him. He then prayed himself with great fervency. The speech which he made was every way worthy of his character full of for- titude, mildness, and charity. He ollered his prayers to God for the three king- doms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and that an end might be speedily put ' to their present trials. Having then asked pardon for his own failings, both ot God and man, he would liave concluded, but being reminded that he liad said nothing of the royal family, he prayed that there never might be wanting one in it to support ills protestant religion; and if any of them liad swerved from the true faith, he prayed tliat God might turn their hearts, but at any rate to save his people from their machinations. Turning round he said, Gentlemen, 1 pray you do not misconstruct my behaviour this day. 1 freely forgive all men their wrongs and injuries done against me, ;;s 1 desire to be forgiven of God. Mr Annand .1 . Bogle . REV. G.EORGE CAM PB [ LL, O. ID PRINCIPAL OF MARISCHAL COLLEGE. He SON . GIASGOW, F.DD1BTJRGH It IdNMJT. DR. GEORGE CAMPBELL. 489 siiitl, this gentleman dies a protestant ; when he stepped forward and said, I die not only a protestant, but with a heart-hatred of popery, prelacy, and all superstition whatsomever. He then embraced his friends, gave some tokens of remembrance to his son-in-law, lord Maitland, for his daughter and grand-chil- dren, stripped himself of part of his apparel, of which he likewise made presents, and laying his head upon the block, repeated thrice, Lord Jesus, receive mj spirit, when he gave the signal, and his head was severed from his body. Thus died Archibald Campbell, earl of Argyle, on the 30th of June, 1685, of whom it has been said, " Let him be weighed never so scrupulously, and in the nicest scales, he will not be found in a single instance wanting in the charity of a Christian, the firmness and benevolence of a patriot, nor the integrity and fidelity of a man of honour." CAMPBELL, DB GEORGE, an eminent theological writer, was born on Christ- mas day, 1719. His father was the Rev. Colin Campbell, one of the ministers of Aberdeen ; a man whose simplicity and integrity of character were well known throughout the country, and the cause of his being held in general esteem. While the theological sentiments of this respectable person were perfectly ortho- dox, his style of preaching was very peculiar : it no doubt partook of the fashion of the times, but he seems to have also had a singular taste of his own. Dr Campbell frequently spoke of his father ; and though his connection with so ex- cellent a man afforded him great pleasure, he sometimes amused himself and his friends by repeating anecdotes respecting the oddity of his conceits in preaching. He delighted much in making the heads and particulars of his discourses begin with the same letter of the alphabet. Some very curious examples were in the possession of his son, which he related with great good humour, and which no one enjoyed more than himself. He had followed the fortunes, and adhered to 'the principles of the Argyle family. He was therefore a decided whig, and was very active in promoting, in 1715, among his parishioners, the cause of the Hanoverian succession, and in opposing the powerful interest of the nume- rous tory families in Aberdeen. This worthy man died suddenly, on the 27th of August, 1728, leaving a widow, with three sons and three daughters. The subject of this memoir was the youngest of the sons. The grammar school of Aberdeen has long maintained a high rank among the Scottish seminaries ; and it now enjoyed more than its usual reputation from the connection of Mr Alexander Malcolm, the author of by far the most extensive and philosophical system of arithmetic in the English language, besides an ex- cellent treatise on Music. Such a man produces a strong sensation, wherever the sphere of his exertions happens to be, but in a provincial town like Aber- deen, where almost all the youth are his pupils, the impression he makes is na- turally much greater. George Campbell, though said to have been a lively and idle, rather than a studious boy, made a respectable appearance in this school. He was afterwards enrolled a member of Marischal college, and went through the common course. A senior brother, whose name was Colin, had been devoted to the church, and George therefore proposed to study law. He was bound ap- prentice to Mr Stronach, W. S., Edinburgh, and regularly served the stipu- lated time. But he does not seem to have entered upon this line of hie with any ardour. Before he had finished his apprenticeship, his resolutions were fixed for another profession, and, in 1741, he attended the prelections of pro- fessor Goldie, who then held the theological chair in the Edinburgh university. The celebrated Dr Blair began, about this time, as minister ot the Canongate, to attract public attention by his discourses ; and Campbell became a devoted ad* mirer of the style of that great divine, with whom he, at the same time, formed an intimate personal friendship. T O (I 490 DR. GEORGE CAMPBELL. At the conclusion of his apprenticeship, 31r Campbell returned to Aberdeen, and concluded his education as a clergyman in the divinity halls of that univer- sity. His superior intellect was now marked among his fellows, and he became the leader of a disputing society which WTIS instituted by them in 174-2, under the name of the Theological Club. Being licensed in I74(i, he soon attracted attention by his discourses ; yet in 1747, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the church of Fordoun, in the 3Iearns. When his reputation had acquired more consistency, he was presented to the church of Banchory Teruan, a few miles from Aberdeen, under circumstances of a somewhat extraordinary nature. Nei- ther the patron nor those who recommended Campbell, were aware of his Chris- tian name. It therefore happened that Colin, his elder brother, a man of great worth, but comparatively slender abilities, was applied to, and invited to preach at Banchory, as a prelude to his obtaining the living. Coliii's public exhibitions did not equal the expectations which had been formed ; and, in the course of conversation, the sagacity of the patron, Sir Alexander Burnett, discovered tliat it was his brother whose recommendations had been so ample. George Camp- bell was afterwards invited, and the satisfaction which he gave insured success, for he was ordained minister of that parish, June 2, 1746. He was not long in this situation when he married a young Lady of the name of Farquharson. Though Mr Campbell did not, at this early period of his life, give token of that power of intense application which he manifested in his later years, it is supposed that he formed, in the solitude of Banchory, the original ideas of all his great works. He here composed the most important parts of his Philosophy of Rhetoric. This admirable and truly classical work, in which the laws of elegant composition and just criticism are laid down with singular taste and per- spicuity, originally formed a series of detached essays, and contains, with a few exceptions, the outlines of all the works he ever published At this time also he began his great work, the Translation of the Gospels ; Hhough it is probable Uiat lie did not make much progress until his professional duties directed Ins attention more forcibly to the same subject. His character as a country clergy- man was established in a very short time. The amiable simplicity of his man- ners, the integrity and propriety of his behaviour, conjoined with his extensive knowledge, and the general esteem in whiph he was held by literary men, very soon brought him into notice. He was consequently induced to relinquish his charge in the country, and comply with the invitation of the magistrates of Aberdeen, and take charge of one of the quarters of that city. Hero he derived great advantage from the society of literary men, and the opportunity of con- sulting public libraries. Mr Campbell joined the Literary Society of Aberdeen, which had been formed in the year 1758, and which comprehended many men afterwards eminent in literature and philosophy. The subjects discussed in this association were not confined to those coming strictly within the category of the belles lettres; all the different branches of philosophy were included in its comprehensive range. Campbell took a very active part in the business of the society, and delivered in it the greater part of his " Philosophy of Rhe- toric." 1 When Mr Alexander Fraser Tytler (afterwards Lord Woodhonselee) published his Essay on the Principles of Translation," a correspondence ensued betwixt him and Dr Campbell, in consequence of the latter asserting that many of the ideas contained in the Essay had been appropriated without acknowledgment from his "Translation of the Gospels," published a short time previously. It was, however, satisfactorily established by Mr Tytler, that the supposed plagiarism was in reality the result of coincidence of opinion. Of this the doctor became thoroughly satisfied, and a warm friendship grew up between the parties. DR. GEORGE CAMPBELL. 491 Principal Pollock of Marischal College died in 1759, and it was supposed at the time that the chance of succeeding him was confined to two gentlemen pos- sessed of all the local influence which in such rases generally insures success. Mi- Campbell, who was ambitious of obtaining the situation, resolved to lay his pretensions before the duke of Argyle, who, for many years, had dispensed tlie government patronage of Scotland. It happened tliat one of Mr Campbell's ancestors, his grandfather or great-grandfather, had held the basket into which the marquis of Argyle's head fell when he was beheaded. Mr Campbell hinU-d at this in the letter he addressed to his grace ; and the result was his appoint- ment to the vacant place. This anecdote, we need scarcely remind the reader, lias been lately used in fictitious history. Shortly after this Mr Campbell received the degree of doctor of divinity from King's College, Aberdeen ; and, in 1763, he published his celebrated" Treatise on Miracles," in answer to what was advanced on that subject by David Hume ; a work which has been justly characterised as one of the most acute and con- vincing treatises that has ever appeared upon the subject. A condensed view of the respective arguments of these two philosophers, on one of the most interesting points connected with revealed religion, is thus given by the ingenious William Smellie, in the first edition of the Encyclo- pedia Britannica, under the article ABRIDGMENT : Mr Hume argues, " That experience, which, in some things is variable, in others uniform, is our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact. A variable experience gives rise to probability only ; a uniform experience amounts to a proof. Our belief of any fact from the testimony of eye-witnesses is derived from no other principle than our experience in the veracity of hu- man testimony. If the feet attested be miraculous, here arises a contest of two opposite experiences, or proof against proof. Now, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature ; and as a firm and unalterable experience lias established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as complete as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined ; and, if so, it is an undeniable consequence, that it cannot be surmounted by any proof whatever derived from human testimony. Or Campbell, in his answer, aims at showing the fallacy of Mr Hume's argu- ment by another single position. He argues, " That the evidence arising from human testimony is not solely derived from experience ; on the contrary, tes- timony hath a natural influence on belief, antecedent to experience. The early and unlimited assent given to testimony by children gradually contracts as they advance in life : it is, therefore, more consonant to truth, to say, that our diffidence in testimony is the result of experience, than that our faith in it has this foundation. Besides, the uniformity of experience, in favour of any fact, is not a proof against its being reversed in a particular instance, arising from the single testimony of a man of known veracity will go far t establish a belief in its being actually reversed : If his testimony be confirmed by a few others of the same character, we cannot withhold our assent to th truth of it Now, though the operations of nature are governed by u laws and though we have not the testimony of our senses in favour of any vj lation of them, still, if, in particular instances, we have the testimony ot sands of our fellow-creatures, and those, too, men of strict integrity, swayed by no motives of ambition or interest, and governed by the principles of coii sense, That they were actual eye-witnesses of these violations, the constit. our nature obliges us to believe them." Or Campbell's essay was speedily translated into the French, D man languages. DR. GEORGE CAMPBELL, The activity and application of Dr Campbell received an impulse in 1771, from his being appointed professor of divinity in Marisclial college, in place of L)r Alexander Gerard, who had removed to the corresponding chair in King's. These two eminent men had been colleagues, and preached alternately in the same churclu They were now pitted against each other in a higher walk, and there can be no doubt, that, as the same students attended both, a consider- able degree of emulation was excited betwixt them. Gerard was perfectly sensible of the talents of his new rival His friends had taken the freedom of hinting to him that he had now some reason to look to his laurels; in answer to which he remarked carelessly, that Dr Campbell was indolent. An unfor- tunate misunderstanding had existed between these two excellent men for many years: it was now widened by the report of Gerard's trivial remark, which some busy person earned to Dr Campbell's ears, probably in an exaggerated shape. This circumstance is said, however, to have had the beneficial effect of stimulating Dr Campbell's exertions. The manner in which he discharged his duties was most exemplary; and the specimens which he has given in his Preliminary Dissertations to the Translation of the Gospels, in his Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, and on Theology, afford abundant proofs of his high qualifications as a public lecturer. It will be at the same time observed, from the list of his works, immediately to be submitted, that the vacations of his professional labours were most sedulously employed for the advantao- e of the public and posterity. Dr Campbell appears to us to have been one of the most splendidly gifted men that appeared during the course of the last century. His body was re- markably feeble; his stature greatly below that of ordinary men in this country. His health was extremely delicate, and required for the long period of three- score years and ten the utmost care and attention. Yet his powers of appli- cation were above those of most men, and, what is strange, were exemplified chiefly in his later and feebler years. He was a man of the utmost simplicity of manners and naivete of character, and remarkably pleasant in conversation. The works which he has published prove, in the most indisputable manner, that he was possessed of true philosophical genius. His powers of abstraction appear to have been greater than those of most men of ancient or modern times. The study of languages was employed by him to the best advantage ; and the accuracy of his disquisitions throws a light upon the nature of the human mind, while it discovers a habit of attention to the actings of his own mind, which lias certainly not been surpassed by any of those who have cultivated tlic science of morals. As a minister of religion, he was no less eminent than in any other situation which he ever filled. He was esteemed by his hearers as an excellent lecturer ; but his lectures were perhaps a little superior to his ordinary sermons. As the head of his college, he appeared to the greatest advantage, unassuming, mild, and disposed to show the greatest kindness and tenderness to those who were his inferiors, both in regard to lank or to literary reputation. As professor of divinity, his fame was unrivalled. Many of his pupils have expressed in the warmest language the pleasure they derived from his prelections. Ihere was a peculiar unction in his manner which charmed every one. He encouraged those whom he conceived to be diffident, and equally discountenanced those who appeared to him to be forward or conceited. In church courts he never aimed at shining ; but he was sometimes roused to great extemporaneous exer- tion in that field, and it was remarked that his replies were generally better than his introductory speeches. He was a zealous advocate for liberty of con- science, and lent all his influence to his friend principal Robertson respecting JOHN CAMPBELL ! 07 A'RGYKE AHD CKEENWICH . JOHN CAMPBELL. 493 the popish bill. His preponderance in the town of Aberdeen was never great in public questions ; and indeed he never aimed at such an object : but in private society, he was always esteemed the life of the company, and never failed to make a strong impression. 1 Dr Campbell died, April 6, 1796, in the 77th year of his age. CAMPBELL, JOHN, duke of Argyle and Greenwich, a distinguished soldier and statesman, was the son of Archibald, first duke of Argyle, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Lionel Talmas of Helmingham, by Elizabeth, afterwards duchess of Lauderdale, daughter of William Murray, earl of Dysart. His grace was born, October 10, 1678 ; and on the day in which his grandfather, Archibald, earl of Argyle, fell a sacrifice to the tyranny of James VII., (some say at the very moment of his execution), the subject of this narrative, being then in his seventh year, fell from a window in the third story of the house of Dunybrissel, then possessed by his aunt, the countess of Murray, and, to the astonishment of the whole household, was taken up without having suffered any material injury ; a circumstance which his relatives and friends considered as indicating not only future greatness, but that he was destined to restore the lustre of the house of Argyle, which at that moment was under a melancholy eclipse. The care of his education was confided to a licentiate of the Scottish church, named Walter Campbell, who, for his diligence, was afterwards rewarded by the family with a presentation to the parish of Dunoon. Under this gentle- man he studied the classics, and some branches of philosophy. But he was distinguished by a restless activity, rather than a fondness for study, and his father, anxious to place him in a situation where he might have it in his power to retrieve the fortunes of the family, took an early opportunity of presenting him to king William, who, in 1694, bestowed upon the young nobleman the command of a regiment, he being yet in his sixteenth year. In this situation he continued till the death of his father in the month of December, 1703, when, succeeding to the dukedom, he was sworn of his majesty's privy council, and appointed captain of the Scots horse guards, and one of the extraordinary lords of session. In 1704, the order of the thistle being revived in Scotland, his grace was installed one of the knights, which dignity he subsequently ex- changed for the order of the garter. In 1705, being exceedingly popular among his countrymen, the duke of Argyle was appointed her majesty's high commissioner to the Scottish parlia- ment, in order to prepare the way for the treaty of union, which her majesty, queen Anne, in concert with her English counsellors, had now determined to carry into effect. For his services in this parliament, he was created an English peer, by the titles of baron of Chatham and earl of Greenwich. His grace, after this, sewed four campaigns in Flanders, under the duke of Marlborough, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant-general, and was honourably distin- guished in the battles of Ramilies, Oudinarde, and Malplaquet, in the last of which he narrowly escaped, having a number of balls shot through his coat, hat, and periwig. He was also employed at the sieges of Ostend, Menin, Lisle, Ghent, and Tournay. On the change of ministry in 1710, Argyle veered with the win. 1 The following is A list of his writings:!. The Character of a Pattern. 2. Dissertation on Mirades.-3. The Spirit of the Gos pel.- 11. Lectures on Theology 494 JOHN CAMPBELL. court, and having become a declaimer against the duke of Marlborongh, was by the tories appointed generalissimo in Spain, where there were groat complaints of mismanagement on the part of the former ministry, and where it was now proposed to carry on the war with more than ordinary vigour. Here, however, his grace was completely overreached, the ministry having no intention <>t carrying on the war any where. On his arrival in Spain, he found (he army in a state of perfect disorganization, without pay and without necessaries, and though the parliament had voted a large sum for its subsistence, not one farthing was sent to him. He was under the necessity of raising money upon his plate and personal credit for its immediate wants, and in a short time returned to England, having accomplished nothing. This treatment, with a report that a design had been laid to take him off by poison while he was on his ill-fated journey, and, above all, the superior influence of the earl of Mar, who, as well as himself, aspired to the sole administration of Scottish affairs, totally alienated him from his new friends, the tories. He became again a leading whig, and a violent declaimer for the protestant succession, in consequence of which he \\as deprived of all his employments. His grace had been a principal agent in accomplishing the union, by which his popularity was considerably injiuvd among the lower orders of his countrymen ; this he now dexterously retrieved, by joining with Mar and his Jacobite associates at court, for the dissolving of that treaty which he now pretended had completely disappointed his expecta- tions. A motion for this end was accordingly made in the house of lords on the Hrst of June, 1713, by the earl of Seafield, who also had been one of the most forward of the original supporters of the measure. The motion was seconded by the earl of Mar, and urged by Argyle with all the force of his eloquence. One of his principal arguments, however, being the security of the protestant succession, he was led to speak of the pretender, which he did with so much acrimony, that several of the high Jacobites fled the house without waiting for the vote. This was the means of disappointing the project, which otherwise had most certainly been carried, it having been lost after all by no more than four voices. On the illness of the queen in the following year, the zeal of his grace for the protestant succession was most conspicuous, as well as most happy. No- body at the time entertained any doubt that Bolingbroke and his party had an intention at least to attempt the pretender's restoration on the death of the queen ; and to prevent any undue advantages being taken of circumstances, Argyle no sooner was apprized of her dangerous situation, than, along with the duke of Somerset, he repaired to the council-board, and prevailed to have all the privy counsellors- in and about London, without any exceptions, summoned to attend, which, with the sudden death of the queen, so completely'disconcerted the tories, that, for the time, there w;is not the smallest manifestation of one discordant feeling. The queen was no sooner dead, than the seven lords who had by a previous act of parliament been appointed to the regency, together with sixteen additional personages nominated by the heir apparent, in virtue of the same act of parliament, proclaimed the elector of Hanover king of (treat Britain. They at the same time took every precaution for preserving tranquillity, and preparing for his mr.jesty's being peacefully and honourably received on liis arrival. The services of Argyle on this occasion were not overlooked : he was made groom of the stole to the prince, while his majesty had advanced no fur- ther than Greenwich, and two days after was appointed commander-in-chief of his majesty's forces for Scotland. Though by this strange combination of circumstances, viz. the sudden demise of die queen, the disunion of the Jacobites, with the prompt decision of the JOHN CAMPBELL. 495 Whigs, among whom the subject of this memoir was a most efficient leader, the icession of the new dynasty was to all appearance easy and peaceable, the iffled faction very soon rallied their forces and returned to the charge with an energy and a perseverance worthy of a better cause. The cry of " Church in danger" was again raised, and for some weeks England was one srane of universal riot. Many places of worship belonging to dissenters were thrown down, and in several places most atrocious murders were committed. Through the energy of the government, however, open insurrectiomvas for a while prevented, and tranquillity in some measure restored. Still the activity of the Pretender at foreign courts, and the restlessness of his adherents at home, created strong suspicions that an invasion on his behalf was intended, and every preparation that could be thought of was taken to defeat it. A number of new regiments were raised, officers of doubtful character were displaced, suspected persons taken into custody, and lords-lieutenant, with the necessary powers, every where appointed. In the meantime Scotland, where the friends of the exiled family were proportionally much more numerous than in England, was by a strange fatality neglected In the southern and western shires, through the influence of the Hanoverian club, at the head of which was the earl of Buchan, the atten- tion of the people had been awakened, and right feeling to a considerable extent excited ; yet even there Jacobitism was not a rare thing, and in the north, through the influence of the earl of > T ar, it was altogether triumphant. That nobleman, indeed, had cajoled into his views almost all the clans, at the head of whom, to the amount of twelve thousand men, he had taken possession of Perth, and was ready to seize upon the fords of the Forth before the govern- ment had observed his mano?uvres, or taken any proper precautions to counteract them. Sensible at last of the danger, they proclaimed the law for encouraging loyalty in Scotland, summoned a long list of suspected persons to deliver them- selves up to the public functionaries, and, to call forth those supplies of men and money which they had hitherto shown a disposition to forbid rather than to encourage, sent down the difke of Argyle, who had already been constituted com- mander-in-chief of the forces, with all the necessary powers for that purpose. His grace arrived in Edinburgh on the 14th of September, 1715, where his first care was to inspect the garrison, the fortifications, and the magazines, from the List of which he ordered thirty cart loads of arms and ammunition to be sent to Glasgow and Stirling for the use of the inhabitants. He then proceeded to review the army which had been assembled at Stirling, general Wightman having there formed a camp of all the disposable forces in Scotland, which fell short of two thousand men, a number altogether inadequate to the arduous duties they had to perform. The first care of his grace was, of course, to augment the forces by every possible means ; for which end he wrote to the magistrates of Glasgow, and through them to all the well affected in the west of Scotland, to forward such troops as they mijjht have in readiness without loss of time, and to have as many more provided against a sudden emergency as possible. Glasgow, which had been in expectation of such a catastrophe for a considerable time, immediately forwarded to Stirling upwards of seven hundred men well equipped, under the command of provost Aird, with whom they joined colonel John Blackadder, governor of Stirling castle. These seven hundred were instantly replaced at Glasgow by detachments from Kilmarnock, Irvine, Greenock, and Paisley, where, with the exception of detachments sent out to garrison the houses of Drummaki 11, Gartartan, and Cardross, they were allowed to remain for the convenience of provisions, which were rather scarce at Stirling. He also ordered Jevies to fill up every company in the regular regiments to fifty men, and to add two fresh companies to each regiment. But though he offered 496 JOHN CAMPBELL. a strictly limited term of service, and a liberal bounty for that period (two pounds sterling for each nian), he does not appear to have been successful in adding to his numbers. Nor, with all his earnestness of application, could h prevail on the government to spare him from En-jland, where troops were plentiful, a single man. One regiment of dragoons and two of foot from Ireland was the utmost he could obtain, which, till he should he able to ascertain the intentions of the earl of Mar, were also stationed at Glasgow. While Argyle was thus struggling with difficulties, and completely hampered in all his opera- tions, 3Iar had greater means than he had genius to employ, and could, without any exertion, keep his opponent in perpetual alarm. He had already, by a stratagem, nearly possessed himself 'of the castle of Edinburgh, ere the magis- trates of that city were aware of his being in arms. A detachment from his army, by a night march, descended upon Burntnland, where a vessel loaded with arms for the earl of Sutherland, had been driven in by stress of weather. 'Ihis vessel they boarded, tarrying off the arms, with as many more as could be found in the town. A still bolder project was about the same time attempted in the north-west, where a numerous party of the 3Iacdonalds, 3Iacleans, and Camevons, under the orders of general Gordon, attempted to surprise the garrison of Inverlochy. They were, however, repulsed, after having made themselves masters of two redoubts and taken twenty men. They then turned south upon Argyleshire for the purpose of raising men, and general Gordon, who had the reputation of an excellent officer, threatened to fall down upon Dumbarton and Glasgow. This was another source of distraction to Argyle, whose small army could not well admit of being divided. Gordon, however, met with little encouragement in the way of recruiting, and after alarming Inverary, where the duke had stationed his brother, lord Hay, dropped quietly into 3Iar's camp at Perth, where nearly the whole strength of the rebels was now concentrated. Though Argyle was thus circumscribed in his means, he displayed ceaseless activity and considerable address in the application of them, and the great re- putation he had acquired under Marlborough, rendered him, even with his scanty means, formidable to his opponent, who was altogether a novice in the art mili- tary. One talent of a great general too his grace possessed in considerable perfection, that of finding out the plans and secret purposes of his adversary, of all whose movements he had generally early and complete intelligence ; 3Iar, on the contrary, could procure no intelligence whatever. He knew that a simultaneous rising was to tike place under Thomas Fester of Etherstane, mem- ber of parliament for the county of Northumberland, and another in Nithsdale under viscount Kenmure ; but how they were succeeding, or to what their at- tention had been more immediately directed, he was utterly ignorant. To as- certain these points, to stimulate his friends in their progress, and to open up for himself an easier passage to the south, he detached two thousand five hundred of his best troops under the laird of Borlum, the bravest and the most experienced officer perhaps in his whole army. This detachment was to force its way across the Firth below Edinburgh, and through the Lothians by the way of Kelso till it should find Kenmure or Foster upon the English border. This romantic project the old brigadier, as he was called in the army, accomplished with great facility, one boat with forty men being all that in crossing the Firth fell into the hands of the enemy. A few with the earl of Stratlunore were cut o/Ffrom the rest, but made their escape into the isle of May, whence in a day or two they found their way back to Perth. The principal part of the expedi- tion, consisting nearly of two thousand men, landed between Tantalon, North Berwick and Aberlady, and for the first night quartered in Haddington. Early next morning, the 13th of October, the whole body marched directly for JOHN CAMPBELL. 497 Edinburgh. This threw the citizens into the utmost consternation, and an express was sent off directly to Stirling for troops to protect the city. Two hundred infantry mounted upon country horses and three hundred cavalry arrived the same evening ; but had Borlum persisted in his original design, they had cer- tainly come too late. On his arriving, however, within a mile of the city, and meeting with none of the citizens, a deputation of whom he had expected to in- voke his aid, and perhaps secretly dreading the movements of Argyle, Borlum turned aside to Leith, which he entered, as he would in all probability have entered Edinburgh, without the smallest opposition. Here the insurgents found and liber- ated their forty companions who had been taken the previous day in crossing the Firth. They also seized upon the Custom-house, where they found considera- ble quantities of meal, beef, and brandy, which they at once appropriated to their own use, and possessing themselves of the citadel, with such materials as they found in the harbour, they fortified it in the best manner they could for their security through the night. Next morning Argyle, with his three hundred cavalry, two hundred infantry, and a few militia, marched against Borlum, accom- panied by generals Evans and Wightman, giving him a summons under pain of treason to surrender, adding that if he waited for an attack, he should have no quarter. The laird of Kynnachin, who was spokesman for the rebels, haughtily re- plied, that the word surrender they did not understand, quarter they would nei- ther take nor give, and his grace was welcome to force their position if he could. Sensible that without artillery no attack could be made upon the place, barricad- ed as it was, with any prospect of success, the duke withdrew to prepare the means of more efficient warfare, and Borlum, disappointed in his views upon Edinburgh, and perhaps not at all anxious for a second interview with the king's troops, took the advantage of an ebb tide and a very dark night, to abandon his posi- tion, marching round the pier by the sands for Seaton house, the seat of the earl of Winton, who was in the south with Kenmure and his associated rebels. This place, after sundry accidants, they reached in safety about two o'clock in the morning. Here they were joined by a number of their companions, who having crossed the Firth farther down were unable to come up with them on the preceding day. Forty of their men, who had made too free with the custom- house brandy, some stragglers who had fallen behind on the march, with a small quantity of baggage and ammunition, fell into the hands of a detachment of the king's troops. Argyle, in the meantime, aware of the strength of Seaton house, sent off an express to Stirling for cannon to dislodge its new possessors, when he was informed that Mar was on his march to foiv-e the passage of the Forth. This compelled him to hasten to Stirling, where he found that Mar had actually commenced his march, and had himself come as far south as Dun- blane, whence hearing of the arrival of the duke, he returned to Perth, having attained his object, \\hich was only a safe retreat for his friends from Seaton house. On his sudden departure for Stirling, Argyle left the city of Edinburgh an-,1 Seaton house to the care of general Wightman and colonel Ker, with a few regular troops and the neighbouring militia. Finding Seaton impregnable to any force they could bring against it, they retired from it, to save themselves the disgrace of making an unsuccessful attack. Borlum finding himself un- molested, and in a country where he could command with ease all kinds of provision, proposed nothing less than to establish there a general magazine for the pretender, and to enlist an army from among the Jacobites of Edinburgh and the adjacent country ; but before he left the citadel of Leith, he despatched a boat with intelligence to Mar ; and, firing after her, the king's ships took her for one of their own boats, and allowed her to pass without molestation. In i. ;3 K 498 JOHN CAMPBELL. consequence ol this notice, 31ar lia WILLIAM CARSTAIRS. 517 placed under the care of a Mr Sinclair, an indulged presbyterian minister, who at that time kept a school of great celebrity at Oriniston, a village in east Lothian. Under Mr Sinclair, in whose school, as in all schools of that kind at the time, and even in the family, no language but Latin was used, Carstairs acquired a perfect knowledge of that language, with great fluency of expressing himself in it, and a strong taste for classical learning in general. He had also the good fortune to form, among the sons of the nobility who attended this celebrated seminary, several friendships, which were of the utmost consequence to him in after life. Having completed his course at the school, Mr Carstairs entered the college of Edinburgh in his nineteenth year, where he studied for four years under Mr, afterwards Sir William Paterson, who in later life became clerk to the privy council of Scotland. Under this gentleman he made great proficiency in the several branches of the school philosophy then in vogue ; but the distracted state of the country determined his father to send him to study divinity in Hol- land, where many of his brethren, the persecuted ministers of the church of Scotland, had already found an asylum. He was accordingly entered in the university of Utrecht, where he studied Hebrew under Leusden and Divinity under Herman Witsius, at that time two of the most celebrated professors in Europe. He had also an opportunity, which he carefully improved, of attend- ing the lectures of the celebrated Graevius, who was at this time in the vigour of his faculties and the zenith of his reputation. The study of theology, however, was what he made his main business, which having completed, he was licensed as a preacher of the gospel, but where or by whom seems not to have been known by any of his biographers. In all probability, it was by some of the classes of Holland. Being strongly attached to the presbyterian system, in which he had been educated, and for adherence to which his father was a suf- ferer at home, and himself in a limited sense a wanderer in a strange land, for it was to avoid the taking of unnecessary or unlawful oaths imposed by the bishops that he had been sent by his father to study at Utrecht, he naturally took a deep interest in the affairs of his native country, and was early engaged in deliberating upon the means of her deliverance. On sending him to Holland by the way of London, his father introduced him by letter to an eminent physician of that city, who kindly furnished him with a letter to the physician of the prince of Orange. This latter gentleman, upon the strength of his friend's recommendation, introduced Carstairs to the Pensionary Fogel, who finding him so much a master of every thing relative to the state of parties and interests in Great Britain, introduced him to a private interview with his master, the prince, who was at once struck with his easy and polite address, and with the extent of his political knowledge. This favourable opinion was heightened by subsequent interviews, and in a short time nothing of consequence was tran- sacted at his court relative to Great Britain, till Carstairs had been previously consulted. Holland had, from the first attempts of the court after the Restora- tion to suppress the presbyterians, been the general resort of such of the Scot- tish clergy as found it impossible to retain their stations, and they were soon followed by numbers of their unhappy countrymen who had vainly perilled their lives on the fatal fields of Pentland and Bothwell, with the principal of whom Carstairs could not, in the circumstances in which he was placed, fail to become acquainted. Being well connected, and in no way obnoxious to the government, he seems to have been selected both by his expatriated countrymen and by the agents of the prince of Orange to visit Scotland on a mission of observation in the year 1682. Nothing could be more hopeless than the condition of Scotland at this time. 518 \VI 1.1,1 AM CAUSTAIRS. Her ministers where every where silenced : Cargill and Cameron, the only two that remained of the intrepid band that had so long kept up the preached gospel in the fields, had both fallen, the one on the scaffold by an iniquitous sentence, the other on the open heath by the hand of violence. Her nobles were either the slaves of arbitrary royalty, or they had already expatriated themselves, or were just about to do so, while the body of her people, Issachar-like, were crouching beneath their burdens in the most hopeless dejection. Finding- no encouragement in Scotland, where the few individuals that felt any of the true aspirations of liberty, were seriously engaged in a project for purchasing lands and transporting themselves, their families, and their friends to Carolina in North America, Mr Carstairs determined to return to Holland, where, under a rational and indulgent government, he had enjoyed a liberty which he found to his grief was not to be obtained at home. He, however, probably not with- out instructions, took London in his way, where he arrived in the month of November, 1682, at the very time when Shaftesbury, Monmouth, Sydney, Essex, Russell, Hampden, and Howard were engaged in what lias been called Shaftesbury's plot, or more generally, from a forged story of a design to murder the king and the duke of York at a farm called the Rye, possessed by colonel Rumbold, the Ryehouse plot. These gentlemen were actuated by very different views. Monmouth had probably no object but the crown ; Russell and Hampden were for restraining the prerogative and securing the nation's liberties, civil and reli- gous ; Sydney and Essex wei-e for restoring the republic, while Howard, a man without principle, seems to have had nothing in view, but to raise a tumult, whereby he might by accident promote his private interest. All of them, how- ever, agreed in soliciting the co-operation of those Scotsmen, who, no longer able to subsist under the impositions of a government whose sole object seemed to be not the protection, but the entire ruin of its subjects, were about to trans- port themselves to a distant and desert country. Most of the conspirators hav- ing some previous knowledge of Carstairs, he was employed to negotiate be- tween the parties ; and he was empowered by a letter from Sir James Stewart, afterwards lord advocate for Scotland, to assure the English conspirators that, upon furnishing a certain sum of money for the purchase of arms and ammuni- tion, the Scottish refugees in Holland were ready to co-operate with them by an immediate descent upon the west coast of Scotland. This letter he com- municated to Russell and Sydney, seconding its contents by a fervent eulogium upon the influence, the talents, and the particular merits of Argyle, whose numerous vassals, extensive jurisdictions, as well as his past sufferings, pointed him out as the most proper person to head an insurrection in that country. All this must have been self-evident to the whole party ; yet they do not seem to have been so cordial as might have been expected. Though Carstairs ceased not to press the object of his mission, he was put on" from time to time till he was at length told by Shepherd, an eminent wine-merchant in London, who was one of the subaltern conspirators, that he had heard Sydney declare that he would have nothing to do with Argyle, being well aware that, whatever his present circumstances might prompt him to undertake, he was too strongly at- tached to the reigning family and to the present government, both in church and state, to unite cordially with them in the measures they had determined to pur- sue. At the same time, he was told both by Shepherd and Ferguson that tha party were jealous of Sydney as driving a secret design of his own, and Fer- guson took the opportunity to hint to Mr Carstairs, that there might be an easier method of attaining their point than by an open rebellion, as by taking the lives of at most two men, they might spare the lives of thousands, evidently, hinting at what must have been spoken of among the inferior members of this WILLIAM CARSTAIRS. 519 conspiracy, though certainly never among the higher, the assassination of the king and the duke of York. Feeling himself insulted, and the cause disgraced by such a proposal, Mr Carstairs told Ferguson, that he and the men with whom he was engaged, thought themselves warranted even with arms in their hands, to demand, for redress of their grievances, those constitutional remedies which had been so often denied to their complaints and remonstrances ; but they held it beneath them, both as men and as Christians, to adopt any such mean and cowardly contrivances either against the king or his brother. From that time forward, Ferguson never mentioned any such thing in his presence, nor did he ever hear any such thing alluded to in his intercourse with any other of the party. Disgusted, however, Avith their procrastination he took his de- parture for Holland, without carrying any message, having refused to do so, except it were a full compliance with his demands. Scarcely had he landed in Holland, than Shaftesbury found it convenient to follow him, not daring to trust himself any longer in England ; and by his desertion, the remaining conspirators, finding their connection with the city of London, upon which they had placed great dependence, broken, saw it the more necessary to unite with Argyle and the refugees abroad, as well as with the Scots at home. Sydney now dropped all his objections, and letters were immediately for warded to Carstaira, requesting him to come over, and an ex- press was sent do\vn to Scotland, for his friends to come up, in order to a speedy adjustment of every particular relative to the insurrection and consentaneous in- vasion. In consequence of this, consultations were held among the refugees, Argyle, Stair, Loudoun, Stewart, and others, where it was proposed that the conspirators in England should contribute thirty thousand pounds sterling in money, and one thousand horse, to be ready to join Argyle the moment he should land upon the west coast of Scotland. Mr Stewart was for accepting a smaller sum of money, if so much could not be obtained ; but all agreed in the necessity of raising the horse before any thing should be attempted. Stair seemed more cold in the matter than the others ; but Argyle having assured Carstairs that, so soon as the preliminaries were settled, he would be found abundantly zealous, he consented to carry their proposals and lay them before the committee or council, that had been by the conspirators appointed to con- duct the business at London. When he arrived there, he was mortified to find that the difficulty of raising the money now was as formidable an obstacle as the opposition of Sydney had formerly been. Russell frankly acknowledged that the whole party could not raise so much money ; and begged that ten thousand pounds might be accepted as a beginning, and even this was never paid to Shepherd, who was appointed cashier to the concern, nor was one single step taken for levying the proposed number of troops upon the borders. After hav- ing spent several weeks in London, fruitlessly prosecuting the business that had been entrusted to him, he became perfectly convinced from the temper of the men and their mode of procedure that the scheme would come to nothing. This opinion he communicated to a meeting of his countrymen, where were present Baillie of Jerviswood, lord Mclvill, Sir John Cochrane, the Campbells of Cess- nock, and others, recommending it to them to attend to their own safety, by putting an immediate stop to further preparations, till their brethren of Eng- land should be more forward, and better prepared to join them. Baillie of Jer- viswood, the most ardent and decisive of all his countrymen who had engaged in this enterprise, reflected bitterly upon the timidity of the English, who had suffered their zeal to evaporate in talk, when they might, by promptitude of action, have been already in possession of the benefits they expected to derive 520 WILLIAM CARSTAIRS.. from the undertaking ; and insisted that the Scots should prosecute the undertaking by themselves. There was, no doubt, in this something; very heroic ; but alas, it was vain, and he himself was speedily brought to confess that it was so. It was agreed to, however, by all, that a communication should be made to their English friends, that, unless they were determined to act with more vigour, they were not to expect co-operation on the part of the Scots any longer. In the meantime they wrote to their friends in Scotland, to suspend their preparations till further notice. This was a very proper and wise determination ; only it came loo late. The English conspirators had no unity of purpose, and they had no decision. They had talked away the time of action, and the whole scheme was already falling to pieces by its own weight In short, before they could return an answer to their Scottish brethren, the whole was betrayed, and they were alone to a man in the hands of the government. The prudence of the Scots saved them in part ; yet the government got im- mediate information, that there had been a correspondence carried on with Ar- gyle by the conspirators, and Major Holmes, the person to whom all Argyle's letters were directed, was taken into custody, having a number of the letters, and the cypher and key in his possession. The cypher and key belonged to Mr Carstairs, who had sent it to Monuiouth only two days before, to enable him to read a letter from Argyle, which having done, he returned it to Major Holmes, in whose hands it was now taken. The earl of Melfort no sooner saw the cypher than he knew part of it to be the handwriting of Carstairs, and an order was instantly issued for his apprehension, as art and part in the assassina- tion plot Though Mr Carstairs was conscious of being innocent as to this part of the plot, he had gone too far with the conspirators for an examination on the subject to be safe either for himself or his friends. He therefore assumed a fic- titious name, and concealed himself among his friends in Kent the best way he could. Being discovered in this situation, he was suspected to be the notorious Ferguson, of all the conspirators the most obnoxious to government, and as such was seized in the house of a friend at Tenterden, and thrown into the jail of that place on the Monday after the execution of lord Russell. Here he con- tinued for a fortnight, when orders came for his being brought up to London, where he was for some days committed to the charge of a messenger at anus. During this interval Sir Andrew Forrester brought him a message from the king informing him, that though his majesty was not disposed to believe that he had any direct hand in plotting either his death, or that of the duke of York ; yet as he liad corresponded with Argyle and Russell, he was convinced that he knew many particulars relative to the Rye House plot, which if he would discover, with what he knew of any other machinations against the government, he would not only receive an ample pardon for the past, but the king would also show him all manner of favour for the time to come. If, however, he rejected this, he was to abide by the consequences, which, in all likelihood, would be fatal to him. His answer not proving satisfactory, he was committed to close custody in the Gatehouse, where he continued upwards of eleven weeks. During this time he was often before the privy council, but revealed nothing. At length, finding that he could obtain no favour through the king, but upon dishonourable condi- tions, he petitioned the court of king's bench for his habeas corpus, instead of which he received an intimation, that he was to be sent down to Scotland within twenty-four hours, to take his trial in that kingdom. It was in vain that he re- presented it as a breach of law to send him to be tried in Scotland for a crime said to be committed in England. He was sent off next day with several other of his friends, who were consigned into the hands of the Scottish privy council, to be tried for compassing the death of the king in London, or at the Rye WILLIAM CARSTAIRS. 521 House, between London and Newmarket Among that unhappy number was a servant of Argyle, of the name of Spence, who was instantly brought before that most abominable tribunal, the privy council of Scotland, where, because he refused to take an oath to criminate himself, he was first put to the torture of (he boot, which he endured with unshrinking firmness ; then kept from sleep upwards of nine nights together -which not answering the expectations that had been formed, steel screws were invented for his thumbs, which proved so exquisite a torment, that he sunk under it, the earl of Perth assuring him at the same time, that they would screw every joint of his body in the same man- ner till he took the oath. Even in this state, Spence had the firmness to sti- pulate, that no new questions should be put to him, that he should not be brought forward as a witness against any person, and that he himself should be pardoned. He then acquainted them with the names of Argyle's correspondents, and as- sisted them in de-cyphering the letters, by which it was seen what Argyle had demanded, and what he had promised to dp upon his demands being granted ; but there was nothing in them of any agreement being then made. Carstairs, in the mean time, was laid in irons, and continued in them several weeks, Perth visiting him almost daily, to urge him to reveal what he knew, with promises of a full pardon, so far as he himself was concerned. On this point, however, Mr Carstairs was inflexible ; and when brought before the council, the instruments of torture being laid before him, and he asked by the carl of Perth if he would answer upon oath such questions as should be put to him, he replied, with a firmness that astonished the whole council, that in a cri- minal matter he never would, but, if they produced his accusers, he was ready to vindicate himself from any crime they could lay to his charge. He was then assured, that if he would answer a few questions that were to be put to him concerning others, nothing he said should ever militate against himself, nor should they ever inquire, whether his disclosures were true or false ; but he peremptorily told them, that with him, in a criminal cause, they should never found such a detestable precedent. To the very foolish question put to him, if he had any objections against being put to the torture, he replied, he had great objections to a practice that was a reproach to human nature, and as such banished from the criminal courts of every free country. Here he repeated the remonstrances he had given in to the council at London, and told them that he did consider his trial a breach of the habeas corpus act. To this Perth re- plied, that he was now in Scotland, and must be tried for crimes committed against the state by the laws of that country, had they been committed at Con- stantinople. The executioner was now brought forward, and a screw of a par- ticular construction applied to his thumb with such effect, that large drops of sweat streamed over his brow. Yet he was self-possessed, and betrayed no in- clination to depart from his first resolution. The earl of Queensberry was much affected, and after telling Perth that he saw the poor man would rather die than confess, he ran out of the council, followed by the duke of Hamilton, both being unable longer to witness the scene. Perth sat to the last without betraying any symptoms of compassion for the sufferer. On the contrary, when by his express command the executioner had turned the screw with such violence as to make Carstairs cry out, that now he had squeezed the bones to pieces, the monster, in great indignation, told him that if he continued longer obstinate, he hoped tc see every bone in his body squeezed to pieces. Having kept their victim under this cruel infliction for an hour and a half without effect, the execu- tioner was ordered to produce the iron boots, and apply them to his legs ; but, happily for Mr Carstairs, the executioner, young at his trade, and com- posed of less stern stuff than liis masters, was so confused that he could not i. 3 u 522 WILLIAM CARSTAIRS. fix them on. After repeated attempts, he was obliged to give it up, and the council adjourned. Torture having thus proved vain, the council once more assailed him in the way of flattery, promising him an ample pardon for himself, and that he should never be called in any court as a witness on any trial, and they further stipu- lated, that none of his answers to the interrogatories to be put to him, should ever be produced in evidence, either directly or indirectly, in any court, or against any person whatsoever. On these conditions, as they had already ex- tracted from Mr Spence and Major Holmes, nearly all that he could inform them of upon the stipulated questions, he consented to answer them, provided the promise made him was ratified by a deed of court, and recorded in their books. He had, however, scarcely given his answers, when they were printed and hawked through the streets, under the name of Carstairs' Confession. Had they been printed correctly, less might have been said ; but they were garbled to suit the purpose of the ruling party, which was to criminate Jervis- wood, on whose trial Mackenzie the advocate read them to the jury as an admi- nicle of proof, without taking any notice of the qualifications with which they were clothed, the alleviating circumstances with which the facts to which they related were accompanied, or the conditions upon which he delivered them. They were so far true to their agreement, however, as to relieve him from his confinement in a dungeon of the castle, where he had remained for some months cut off from all communication with his friends, and struggling under the infir- mities of a shattered constitution. He was also permitted to leave Scotland, on condition that he should wait on the secretaries at London, on his way to Hol- land. Milport being then at court, he went to him and demanded a pass, which he found no difficulty in obtaining ; but the king was desirous to see him, and the secretary thought he ought in duty to wait upon him, and receive his com- mands. On stating, however, that, in such a conversation with the king, he might be led to say what might not be so honourable to some of his majesty's ser- vants in Scotland, the secretary made out his pass, and he departed for Holland, where he arrived in the end of the year 1684, or the beginning of 1685, only a few months before the death of Charles II., and the accession of James VII. This was by far the most important event in the life of Carstairs, and it is impossible to say how much the human race may be indebted to his firmness and his address on this occasion. He had, at this very time, secrets of the greatest consequence from Holland, trusted to him by the pensionary Fogel, of which his persecutors had no suspicion. The discovering of these secrets would not only have saved him from torture, but would undoubtedly have brought him a high reward, and, had they been at that time discovered, the glorious revolution might have been prevented, and these kingdoms, instead of being the first and most exalted, as they are at this day, been among the lowest and most debased of nations. The great anxiety the Scottish managers were under to take the life of Baillie, by implicating him in the Rye House plot, seems so totally to have blinded them, that they had no suspicion of the Dutch connection, which Carstairs was so apprehensive about, and which he was so successful in conceal- ing. On his return to Holland, William, fully appreciating his merits, received him into his family, appointed him one of his own chaplains, and at the sanio time procured him to be elected minister of the English protestant congregation at Leyden. To the day of his death William reposed upon the advice of Car- stairs with the most perfect confidence. He - was now, indeed, much better qualified than ever for being serviceable to his illustrious patron. During his stay in Britain he liad had a fair opportunity of judging of public men and pub- lic measures. He had not only witnessed in others, but he had felt himself, the WILLIAM CARSTAIRS. 523 severities of a popish administration ; and he saw the universal alienation of all ranks from the system of government they had adopted, and perceived tliat the very methods fallen upon for stilling popular clamour was only tendino- to it' increase. The narrow politics of the duke of York he had thoroughly pene trated, was aware of all the schemes he had laid for enslaving the nation, and saw that the tools with which he was working could easily be turned to his own destruction. Of all these interesting particulars he was admitted to give his sentiments freely to the prince of Orange, who was no longer at pains to con ceal his aversion to the means James was employing to restore the Catholic church. This encouraged still greater numbers of suffering British subjects to place themselves under his protection, and for the characters of these new comers his Royal Highness generally applied to Carstairs, and he was wont to remark, that he never in one instance had occasion to charge him with the smallest attempt to mislead or deceive him. It cannot indeed be doubted that he was made the channel of many complaints and advices to William, which were never made known to the public. Of these secret warnings the prince had sagacity enough to make the best use, even when he was to outward appearance treating them with neglect, and Carstairs himself was in all probability not a little surprised when he was summoned to attend him on an expedition to Great Britain. Notwithstanding all that has been spoken and written and printed about it, we believe that William felt very little, and cared very little about the Bufferings of the British people ; but he had an eye steadily fixed upon the British crown, to which, till the birth of a prince of Wales, June 10th, 1688 his wife was the heir apparent, and so long as he had the prospect of a natural succession, whatever might be the disorders of the government or the wishes o) the people, he was not disposed to endanger his future greatness by any thing like a premature attempt to secure it. The birth of the prince, however, gave an entirely new aspect to his atfairs. He behoved now to fix upon the disorder? of the government, and embrace the call of the people, or abandon all reasonable hopes of ever wearing that diadem which he so fondly coveted, and by which alone he could ever hope to carry into effect those mighty plans of policy with which his mind had been so long pregnant. Equally wise to discern and prompt to act, he lost not a moment in idle hesitation ; but while he seemed to discourage all the invitations he was now daily receiving, hastened to complete his preparations, and on the 19th ofOctober, 1688, set sail for the shore of Britain with sixty-five ships of war, and five hundred transports, carrying upwards oi fifteen thousand men. The subject of this memoir accompanied him as his domestic chaplain aboard his own ship, and he had in his train a numerous retinue of British subjects, whom the tyranny of the times had compelled to take refuge in Holland. On the evening of the same day, the fleet was dispersed in a tremendous hurricane, and by the dawn of next morning not two of the whole fleet were to be seen together. On the third day William returned to port, with only four ships of war and forty transports. The ship in which he himself sailed narrowly escaped being wrecked, which was looked on by some about him as an evil omen, and among the rest by Burnet, afterwards bishop of Salis- bury, who remarked that it seemed predestined they should not set foot on Eng- lish ground. A few days, however, collected the whole fleet once more, and on the 1st of November, the whole sailed again with a fair wind, and on Mon- day the 5th, the troops were safely landed at Torbay in Devonshire, the English fleet all' the while lying wind-bound at Harwich. On the landing of the troops, Mr Carstairs performed divine service at their head, after which the whole army drawn up along the beach sang the 118th psalm before going into a camp. From this time till the settlement of the crowns upon William and Mary, Car- 524 WILLIAM CARSTAIRS. stall's continued about the person of the prince, being consulted and employe** in negotiating affaire of peculiar delicacy, and disposing of sums of money witl- which he* was entrusted, in various quarters. " It was during this interval,' says his biographer, and the editor of his state papers, the Rev. Joseph M'Cor mick, " that he had it in his power to be of the greatest service to the prince of Orange, nothing being carried on relative to the settlement of Scotland which the prince did not communicate to him, and permit him to give his sentiments of in private." He was highly instrumental in procuring the settlement of the church of Scotland in its present presbyterian form ; which was found to be z> matter of no small difficulty, as the king was anxious that the same system should continue in both parts of the island. Carstairs has been often blamed for hav- ing acceded to the king's wishes for maintaining patronage, and also for re- commending that some of the worst instruments of the late monarch should be continued in office, which he did upon the plea that most of them were possessed of influence and qualifications, which, if properly directed, might be useful un- der the new regime. It must be recollected, that, at such a critical time, a man of Carstairs' political sagacity was apt to be guided rather by what was practically expedient than wliat was abstractly proper. It is probable that Car- stairs, who was unquestionably a sincere man, was anxious to render the settle- ment of the church and of the government as liberal as he thought consistent with their stability, or as the circumstances he had to contend against would permit. King William now took an opportunity of atoning to his counsellor for all his former sufferings ; he appointed Mr Carstairs his chaplain for Scotland, with the whole revenue of the Chapel RoyaL He also required the constant presence of Mr Carstairs about his person, assigning him apartments in the palace when at home, and when abroad with the army allowing him 500 a year for camp equipage. He was of course with his majesty at all times, and by being thus always at hand was enabled on some occasions, to do signal service both to his king and his country. Of this we have a remarkable instance, which happened in the year 1694. In 1693, the Scottish parliament had passed an act, obliging all who were in office to take the oath of allegiance to their majesties, and at the same time to sign the assurance, as it was called, whereby they declared William to be king de jure as well as de facto. This was one of the first of a long series of oppressive acts, intended secretly to ruin the Scottish church, by bringing her into collision with the civil authorities, and in the end depriv- ing her of that protection and countenance which she now enjoyed from them. This act had been artfully carried through the parliament by allowing a dis- pensing power to the privy council in cases where no known enmity to the king's prerogative existed. No honest presbyterian at that time had any ob- jection to king William's title to the crown ; but they had insuperable objections to the taking of a civil oath, as a qualification for a sacred office. Numerous applications were of course made to the privy council for dispensations ; but that court which had still in it a number of the old persecutors, so far from complying with die demand, recommended to his majesty, to allow no one to sit down in the ensuing general assembly till he had taken the oath and signed the assur- ance. Orders were accordingly transmitted to lord Carmichael, the commissioner to the assembly to that effect. When his lordship arrived in Edinburgh, how- ever, he found the clergy obstinately determined to refuse compliance with his demand, and they assured him it would kindle a flame over the nation which it would surpass the power of those who had given his majesty this pernicious council to extinguish. Lord Carmichael, firmly attached to his majesty, and aware that the dissolution of this assembly might not only be fatal to the church WILLIAM CA.RSTAIRS. 625 of Scotland, but to the interests of his majesty in that country, sent a flying [jacket to the king, representing the difficulty, and requesting further instruc- tions. Some of the ministers at the same time wrote a statement of the case to Carstairs, requesting his best offices in the matter. Lord Carmichael's packet arrived at Kensington on a forenoon in the absence of Mr Carstairs, and William, who, when he could do it with safety, was as fond of stretching the prerogative as any of his predecessors, with the advice of the trimming lord Stair and the in- famous Tarbet, both of whom being with him at the tune, calumniously repre- sented the refusal on the part of the clergy to take the oaths, as arising from disaffection to his majesty's title and authority, peremptorily renewed his in- structions to the commissioner, and despatched them for Scotland without a moment's delay. Scarcely was this done, when Carstairs arrived ; and learning the nature of the despatch that had been sent for Scotland, hastened to find the messenger before his filial departure, and having found him, demanded back the packet, in his majesty's name. It was now late in the evening ; but no time was to be lost ; so he ran straight to his majesty's apartment, where he was told by the lord in waiting that his majesty was in bed. Carstairs, however, insisted on seeing him ; and, being introduced to his chamber, found him fast asleep. He turned aside the curtain, and gently awakened him ; the king, astonished to see him at so late an hour, and on his knees by his bedside, asked, with some emotion, what was the matter. " I am come," said Cai-stairs," to beg my life !" " Is it possi- ble," said the king, with still higher emotion, " that you can have been guilty of a crime that deserves death ?" " I have, Sire," he replied, showing the packet he had just brought back from the messenger. " And have you, indeed," said the king, with a severe frown, " presumed to countermand my orders ?" " Let me be heard but for a few moments," said Carstairs, " and I am ready to submit to any punishment your majesty shall think proper to inflict" He then pointed out very briefly the danger of the advice he liad acted upon, and the consequences that would necessarily follow if it was persisted in, to which his majesty listened with great attention. When he had done, the king gave him the despatches to read, after which he ordered him to throw them into the fire, and draw out others to please himself, which he would sign. This was done accordingly ; but so many hours' delay prevented the messenger from reaching Edinburgh, till the very morning when the assembly was to meet ; when nothing but confusion was expected ; the commissioner finding himself under the necessity of dissolving the assembly, and the ministers being determined to as- sert their own authority independent of the civil magistrate. Both parties were apprehensive of the consequences, and both were happily relieved by the arri- val of the messenger with his majesty's letter, signifying that it was his pleasure that the oaths should be dispensed with. With the exception of the act estab- lishing presbytery, this was the most popular act of his majesty's government in Scotland. It also gained Mr Carstairs, when his part of it came to be known, more credit with his brethren and with presbyterians in general, than perhaps any other part of his public procedure. From this period, down to the death of the king, there is nothing to be told concerning Carstairs, but that he con- tinued still in favour, and was assiduously courted by all parties ; and was sup- posed to have so much influence, particularly in what related to the church, that he was called CARDINAL CARSTAIRS. Having only the letters that were addressed to him, without any of his replies, we can only conjecture what these may have been. The presumption is, that they were prudent and discreet. Though he was so great a favourite with Wil- liam, there was no provision made for him at his death. Anne, however, 526 WILLIAM CARSTAIRS. though she gave him no political employment, continued him in the chaplain- ship for Scotland, with the same revenues he had enjoyed under her predeces- sor. In the year 1704, he was elected principal of the college of Edinburgh, for which he drew up a new and very minute set of rules ; and, as lie was wanted to manage affairs in the church courts, he was, at the same time, (at least in the same year,) presented to the church of Greyfriars ; and, in conse- quence of uniting this with his office in the university, he was allowed a salary of 2200 merks a year. Three years after this he was translated to the High Church. Though so deeply immersed in politics, literature had always engaged much of Carstairs' attention ; and he had, so early as 1693, obtained a gift from the crown to each of the Scottish universities, of three hundred pounds sterling per annum, out of the bishops' rents in Scotland. Now that he was more closely connected with these learned bodies, he exerted all his influence with the government to extend its encouragement and protection towards them, and thus essentially promoted the cause of learning. It has indeed been said, tliat from the donations he at various times procured for the Scottish colleges, he was the greatest benefactor, under the rank of royalty, to those institutions, that his country ever produced. The first General Assembly that met after he became a minister of the church of Scotland, made choice of him for moderator ; and in the space of eleven years, he was four times called to fill that office. From his personal influence and the manner in which he was supported, lie may be truly said to have had the entire management of the church of Scotland. In leading the church he displayed great ability and comprehensiveness of mind, with uncommon judgment. " He moderated the keenness of party zeal, and infused a spirit of cautious mildness into the deliberations of the General Assembly. 1 As the great body of the more zealous clergy were hostile to the union of the king- doms, it required all his influence to reconcile them to a measure, which he, as a whole, approved of, as of mutual benefit to the two countries ; and although, after this era, the church of Scotland lost much of her weight in the councils of the kingdom, she still retained her respectability, and perhaps was all the better of a disconnection with political aflairs. When queen Anne, among the last acts of her reign, restored the system of patronage, he vigorously opposed it ; and, though unsuccessful, his visit to London at that time was of essential service in securing on a stable basis the endangered liberty of the church. The ultra-tory ministry, hostile to the protestant interests of these realms, had devised certain strong measures for curtailing the power of the church of Scotland, by discon- tinuing her assemblies, or, at least, by subjecting them wholly to the nod of the court. Mr Carstairs prevailed on the administration to abandon the attempt ; and he, on his part, promised to use all his influence to prevent the discontents occasioned by the patronage bill from breaking out into open insurrection. It may be remarked, that, although patronage is a privilege which, if harshly exercised, acts as a severe oppression upon the people ; yet, while justified so far in abstract right, by the support which the patron is always understood to give to the, clergyman, it was, to say the least of it, more expedient to be en- forced at the commencement of last century than perhaps at present, as it tended to reconcile to the church many of the nobility and gentry of the country, who were, in general, votaries of episcopacy, and therefore disaffected to the state and to the general interests." Principal Carstairs was, it may be supposed, a zealous promoter of the suc- cession of the house of Hanover. Of so much importance were his services deemed, that George I., two years before his accession, signified his acknow- 1 We here quote from a memoir of Principal Carstairs, which nppeared in the Cliristian Instructor, for March, 1827. WILLIAM CARSTAIRS. 527 ledgments by a letter, and, immediately after arriving in England, renewed his appointment as chaplain for Scotland. The last considerable duty upon which the Principal was engaged, was a mission from the Scottish church to congratulate the first prince of the house of Brunswick upon his accession. He did not long survive this period. In August, 1715, he was seized with an apoplectic fit, which carried him off about the end of the December following, in the 6 7th year of his age. His body lies interred in the Greyfriars' church- yard, where a monument is erected to his memory, with a suitable inscription in Latin. The university, the clergy, and the nation at large, united in lamenting the loss of one of their brightest ornaments, and most distinguished benefactors. Carstairs was one of the most remarkable men ever produced by this country. He appears to have been born with a genius for managing great political under- takings ; his father, in one of his letters, expresses a fear lest his " boy Willie " should become too much of a public political man, and get himself into scrapes. His first move in public life was for the emancipation of his country from tyran- nical misrule ; and nothing could well equal the sagacity with which he con- ducted some of the most delicate and hazardous enterprises for that purpose. In consequence of the triumph of the principles which he then advocated, he became possessed of more real influence in the state than has fallen to the lot of many responsible ministers ; so that the later part of his life presented the strangest contrast to the earlier part. What is strangest of all, he preserved through these vicissitudes of fortune the same humble spirit and simple worth, the same zealous and sincere piety, the same amiable and affectionate heart. It fell to the lot of Carstairs to have it in his power to do much good ; and nothing could be said more emphatically in his praise, than tliat he improved every opportunity. The home and heart of Carstairs were constantly alike open. The former was the resort of fill orders of good men ; the latter was alive to every beneficent and kindly feeling. It is related of him, that, although per- haps the most efficient enemy which the episcopal church of Scotland ever had, he exercised perpetual deeds of charity towards the unfortunate ministers of that communion who were displaced at the revolution. The effect of his gene- rosity to them in overcoming prejudice and conciliating affection, appeared strongly at his funeral. When his body was laid in the dust, two men were observed to turn aside from the rest of the company, and, bursting into tears, bewailed their mutual loss. Upon inquiry, it was found that these were two non-jurant clergymen, whose families had been supported for a considerable time by his benefactions. In the midst of all his greatness, Carstairs never forgot the charities of domes- tic life. His sister, who had been married to a clergyman in Fife, lost her husband a few days before her brother arrived from London on matters of great importance to the nation. Hearing of his arrival, she came to Edinburgh to see him. Upon calling at his lodgings in the forenoon, she was told he was not at leisure, as several of the nobility and officers of state were gone in to see him. She then bid the servant only whisper to him, that she desired to know when it would be convenient for him to see her. He returned for answer immediately ; and, leaving the company, ran to her and embraced her in the most affectionate manner. Upon her attempting to make some apology for her unseasonable interruption to business, "Make yourself easy," said he, " these gentlemen are come hither, not on my account, but their own. They will wait with patience till I return. You know I never pray long," and, after a short, but iervent prayer, adapted to her melancholy circumstances, he fixed the time when he could see her more at leisure ; and returned in tears to his company. The close attention which he must have paid to politics does not appear to 528 DAVID CHAMBERS. hare injured his literature any more than his religion, though it perhaps pro- rented liini from committing any work of either kind to the press. We arc told that his first oration in the public hall of the university, after his installa- tion as principal, exhibited so much profound erudition, so much acquaintance with classical learning, and such an accurate knowledge of the Latin tongue, that his hearers were delighted, and the celebrated Dr Pitcairn declared, that when Mr Carstairs began his address, he could not help fancying himself in the forum of ancient Home. In the strange mixed character which he bore through life, he must have corresponded with men of all orders ; but, unfortunately, there is no collection of his letters known to exist. A great number of letters addressed to him by the most eminent men of his time, were preserved by his widow, and conveyed through her executor to his descendant, Principal M'Cor- mick, of St Andrews, by whom they were published in the year 1774. CHAMBERS, DAVID, a distinguished historical and legal writer, of the six- teenth century, was a native of Ross-shire, and generally sulcd " of Ormond" in that county. He received his education in the laws and theology at Aberdeen college, and afterwards pursued his studies in the former branch of knowledge in France and Italy. The earliest date ascertained in his life is his studying at Bologna under 3Iarianus Sozenus in 1556. Soon after, returning to his native country, he assumed the clerical offices of parson of Study and chancellor of the diocese of Ross. His time, however, seems to have been devoted to the legal profession, which was not then incompatible with the clerical, as has al- ready been remarkably shown in the biography of his contemporary and friend Sir James Balfour. In 1564, he was elevated to the bench by his patroness Queen Mary, to whose fortunes he was faithfully attached through life. He was one of the high legal functionaries, entrusted at this time with the duty of compil- ing and publishing the acts of the Scottish parliament. The result of the labours of these men was a volume, now known by the title of " the Black Acts," from the letter in which it is printed. While thus engaged in ascertaining the law* of his country, and diffusing a knowledge of them among his countrjmeu, he became concerned in one of the basest crimes which the whole range of Scottish history presents. Undeterred either by a regard to fundamental morality, or, what sometimes lias a stronger influence over men, a regard to his high professional character, he engaged in the conspiracy for destroying the queen's husband, the unfortunate Darnley. After that deed was perpetrated, a placard was put up by night on the door of the tolbooth, or hall of justice, which publicly denounced lord Ormond as one of the guilty persons. " I have made inquisition," so ran this anonymous accusation, " for the slaughter of the king, and do find the earl of Bothwell, Mr James Balfour, parson of Flisk, Mr David Chambers, and black Mr John Spence, the principal devysers there- of." It affords a curious picture of the times, that two of these men wero judges, while the one last mentioned was one of the two crown advocates, or public prosecutors, and actually appeared in that character at the (rial of his accomplice BothwelL There is matter of further surprise in the partly clerical character of Balfour and Chambers. The latter person appears to liave ex- perienced marks of the queen's favour almost immediately after the murder of her husband. On the 19th of April, he had a ratification in parliament of the lands of Ochterslo and Castleton. On the ensuing 12th of May, he sat as one of the lords of Session, when the queen came forward to absolve Bothwell from all guilt he might have incurred, by the constraint under which he had recently placed her. He also appears in a sederunt of privy council held on the 2^(1 of Slay. But after this period, the fortunes of his mistress experienced a GEORGE CHALMERS. '529 strange overthrow, and Cliambers, unable to protect himself from the wrath ol the ascendant party, found it necessary to take refuge in Spain. He here experienced a beneficent protection from king Philip, to whom lie must have been strongly recommended by his faith, and probably also the tran- sactions in which he had lately been engaged. Subsequently retiring to France, he published in 1572, " Histoire Abregee de tous les Roys de France, Angleterre, et Ecosse," which he dedicated to Henry III. His chief authority in this work was the fabulous narrative of Boece. In 1579, he published other two works in the French language, " La Recherche des singularites les plus remarkables concernant 1' Estait d' Ecosse," and " Discours de la legitime suc- cession des femmes aux possessions des leurs parens, et du gouvernement des princesses aux empires et royaume." The first is a panegyric upon the laws, religion, and valour of his native country all of which, a modern may be inclined to think, he had already rendered the reverse of illustrious by his own conduct The second work is a vindication of the right of succession of females, being in reality a compliment to his now imprisoned mistress, to whom it was dedicated. In France, Chambers was a popular and respected character ; and he testified his own predilection for the people by selecting their language for his composi- tions against the fashion of the age, which would hare dictated an adherence to the classic language of ancient Rome. Dempster gives his literary character in a few words " vir multffi et variae lectionis, nee inamoeni ingenii," a man of much and varied reading, and of not unkindly genius." He was, to use the quaint phrase of Mackenzie, who gives a laborious dissection of his writings, " well seen in the Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, and Spanish lan- guages." On the return of quieter times, this strange mixture of learning and political and moral guilt returned to his native country, where, so far from being called to account by the easy James for his concern in the murder of his father, he was, in the year 1586, restored to the bench, in which situation he continued till his death in November 1592. Another literary character, of the same name and the same faith, lived in the immediately following age. He was the author of a work intitled " Davidis Camerarii Scoti, de Scotorum Fortitudine, Doctrina, et Pietate Libri Quatuor," which appeared at Paris, in small quarto, in 1631, and is addressed by the au- thor in a flattering dedication to Charles I. The volume contains a complete calendar of the saints connected with Scotland, the multitude of whom is apt to astonish a modern protestant. CHAL3IERS, GEORGE, an eminent antiquary and general writer, was born in the latter part of the year 1742, at Fochabers, in Banffshire, being a younger son of the family of Pittensear, in that county. He was educated, first at the grammar-school of Fochabers, and afterwards at king's college, Aberdeen, where he had for his preceptor the celebrated Dr Reid, author of the Enquiry into the Human Mind. Having studied law at Edinburgh, Mr Chalmers removed, in his twenty -first year (1763), to America, as companion to his uncle, who was pro- ceeding thither for the purpose of recovering some property in Maryland. Being induced to settle as a lawyer in Baltimore, he soon acquired considerable practice, and, when the celebrated question arose respecting the payment of tithes to the church, he appeared on behalf of the clergy, and argued their cause with great ability, against Mr Patrick Henry, who subsequently became so conspicuous in the war of independence. He was not only defeated in this cause, but was obliged, as a marked royalist, to withdraw from the country. In England, to which he repaired in 1755, his sufferings as a loyalist at last recommended him to the government, and he was, in 1786, appointed to the respectable situation of i. 3 x 530 GQOROE CHALMERS. clerk to the Board of Trade. The duties of this office he continued to execute, with diligence and ability, for the remainder of his life, a period of thirty-niuc years. Before and after his appointment, he distinguished himself by the com- position of various elaborate and useful works, of which, as well as of all his subsequent writings, the following is a correct chronological list : 1. " The Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763," of which the first volume* appeared in quarto, in 1780: the second was never published. 2. Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain, during the present and four preceding reigns, 1782. 3. Opinions on interesting subjects of Public Law and Commercial Policy ; arising from American Independence, 1784, 8vo. 4. Life of Daniel Defoe, prefixed to an edition of the History of the Union, London, 1786 ; and of Robinson Crusoe, 1790. 5. Life of Sir John Davies, prefixed to his Historical Tracts regarding Ireland, 1786, 8vo. 6. Collection of Treaties between Great Britain and other Powers, 1790, 2 vols. 8vo. 7. Life of Thomas Paine, 17 93-, 8vo. 8. Life of Thomas Ruddiman, A.M., 1794, 8vo. 9. Prefatory Introduction to Dr Johnson's Debates in Parliament, 1794, 8vo. 10. Vindication of the Privi- lege of the People in respect to the constitutional right of free discussion ; with a Retrospect of various proceedings relative to the Violation of that Right, 1796, 8vo. (An Anonymous Pamphlet.) 11. Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare Papers, which were exhibited in Norfolk street, 1797, 8vo. 12. A Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the .Shakspeare Papers, being a reply to Mr Malone's Answer, &c., 1799, 8vo. 13. Appendix to the Supple- mental Apology; being the documents for the opinion that HughTBoyd wrote Junius's Letters, 1800, 8vo. 14. Life of Allan Ramsay, prefixed to an edition of his Poems, 1800, 2 vols., 8vo. 15. Life of Gregory King, prefixed to his observations on the state of England in 1696, 1804, 8vo. 16. The Poetical Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, with a Lite of the Author, prefatory dissertations, and an appropriate glossary, 1806, 3 vols., 8vo. 17. Caledonia, &c., vol. i., 1807, 4to ; vcl. ii., 1810 ; vol. iii., 1824. 18. A Chronological Ac- count of Commerce and Coinage in Great Britain, from the Restoration till 1810, 1810, 8vo. 19. Considerations on Commerce, Bullion and Coin, Cir- culation and Exchanges ; with a view to our present circumstances, 1811, 8vo. 20. An Historical View of the Domestic Economy of Great Britain and Ire- land, from the earliest to the Present Times, (a new and extended edition of the Comparate Estimate,) Edinburgh, 1812, 8vo. 21. Opinions of Eminent Lawyers on various points of English jurisprudence, chiefly concerning the Colonies, Fisheries, and Commerce of Great Britain, 1814, 2 ols., 8vo. 22. A Tract (privately printed) in answer to Malone's Account of Snak- speare's Tempest, 1815, 8vo. 23. Comparative Views of the State of Great Britain before and since the war, 1817, 8vo. 24. The Author of Junius as- certained, from a concatenation of circumstances amounting to moral demon- stration, 1817, 8vo. 25. Churchyard's Chips concerning Scotland; being a Collection of his Pieces regarding that Country, with notes and a life of the au- thor, 1817, 8vo. 26. Life of Queen Mary, drawn from the State Papers, with six subsidiary memoirs, 1818,2 vols., 4to; reprinted in 3 vols., 8vo. 27. The f Poetical Reviews of some of the Scottish kings, now first collected, 1824, 8vo. 28. Robene and Makyne, and the Testament of Cresseid, by Robert Henryson, . edited as a contribution to the Bannatyne Club, of which Mr Chalmers was a member; Edinburgh, 1824. 29. A Detection of the Love-Letters lately at- tributed in Hugh Campbell's work to Mary, Queen of Scots, 1825, 8vo. All these works, unless in the few instances mentioned, were published in London. DR. GEORGE CHAPMAN. CHARLES I. 531 The author's "Caledonia" astonished the world with the vast extent of its erudition and research. It professes to be an account, historical and topographical, of North Britain, from the most ancient to the present times ; and the original intention of the author was, that it should be completed in four volumes, quarto, each containing nearly a thousand pages. Former historians had not presumed to inquire any further back into Scottish history than the reign of Canmore, describing all before that time as obscurity and fable, as Strabo, in his maps, represents the inhabitants of every place which he did not know as Ichthyophagi. But George Chalmers was not contented to start from this point. He plunged fearlessly into the middle ages, and was able, by dint of incredible research, to give a pretty clear account of the inhabitants of the northern part of the island since the Roman conquest. The pains which he must have taken, in compiling in- formation for this work, are almost beyond belief although he tells us in his preface that it had only been the amusement of his evenings. The remaining three volumes were destined to contain a topographical and historical account oi! each county, and the second of these completed his task so far as the Lowlands were concerned, when death, stepped in, and arrested the busy pen of the anti- quary, May 31, 1825. As a writer, George Chalmers does not rank high in point of elegance of style; but the solid value of his matter is far more than sufficient to counterbalance both that defect, and a certain number of prejudices by which his labours ase other- wise a little deformed. Besides the works which we have mentioned, he was the author of some of inferior note, including various political pamphlets on the Tory side of the question. CHAPMAN, Du. GEORGE, an eminent teacher and respectable writer on education, was born in the parish of Alvale, Banffshire, in August, 1723. He studied at Aberdeen, and taught successively in Dalkeith, Dumfries, and Banff. He finally removed to Edinburgh, where he carried on business as a printer. He died February 22d, 1806. Dr Chapman's Treatise on Education appeared in 1782 ; a work of great practical utility. CHARLES I., king of Great Britain, was the second son of James VI. of Scotland, and First of Great Britain, by Anne, daughter of Frederick II., king of penmark and Norway. Charles was born at Duufermline palace, which was the dotarial or jointure house of his mother the queen, on the 19th of Novem- ber, 1600, being the very day on which the earl of Gowry and his brother were publicly dismembered at the cross of Edinburgh, for their concern in the celebrated conspiracy. King James remarked with surprise that the principal incidents of his own personal and domestic history had taken place on this par- ticular day of the month : he had been born, he said, on the 19th of June ; he first saw his wife on the 19th of May; and his two former children, as well as this one, had been born on the 19th day of different months. Charles was only two years and a half old when his father was called up to England to fill the throne of Elizabeth. The young prince was left behind, in charge of the earl of Dunfermline, but joined his father in July, 1603, along with his mother and the rest of the royal family. Being a very weakly child, and not .likely to live long, the honour of keeping him, which in other circumstances would have been eagerly sought, was bandied about by the courtiers, and with some difficulty was at length accepted by Sir Robert Carey and his wife. This was the gentleman who hurried, with such mean alacrity, to inform king James of the demise of his cousin Elizabeth, from whom, in life, he had received as many favours as he could now hope for from her successor. Carey tells us in his own Memoirs, that the legs of the child were unable to support him, and that the king had some thoughts of mending the matter by a pair of iron boots, from which, how- 532 CHARLES I. ever, he was dissuaded. At his baptism, December 23, IfiOO, Charles bad re- reived the titles of duke of Albany, marquis of Orinond, earl of Ross, and lord Ardmanach. He was now, January 1605, honoured with the second title of the English royal family duke of York. King James, whatever may have been the frivolity of his character in some respects, is undeniably entitled to the credit of having carefully educated his children. Prince Henry, the elder brother, and also Charles, were proficients in English, Latin, and French, at an amazingly early age. Although, from their living in separate houses, he did not see them often, he Mas perpetually writing them instructive and encouraging letters, to which they replied, by his desire, in language exclusively supplied by themselves. The king was also in the habit of sending many little presents to his children. " Sweete, sweete father," says Charles, in an almost infantine epistle, yet preserved in the Advo- cates' Library, " I learn to decline substantives and adjectives. Give me your blessing. I thank you for my best man. Your loving son, YORK." The character of Charles was mild, patient, and serious, as a child is apt to be who is depressed by ill health, or an inability to take a share in youthful sports. His brother Henry, who was nearly seven years his senior, and of more robust character, one day seized the cap of archbishop Abbot, which he put upon Charles' head, telling him, at the same time, that when he was king, he would make him archbishop of Canterbury. Henry dying in November 1G 1 2, left a brighter pros- pect open before his younger brother, who, in 1616, was formally created prince of Wales. At this splendid ceremony the queen could not venture to appear, lest the sight should renew her grief for the amiable Henry, whom she had seen go through the same solemnity only a short time before his death. As he grew up to- wards manhood, Charles gradually acquired strength, so that at twenty he was well skilled in manly exercises, and accounted the best rider of the great horse in his father's dominions. His person was slender, and his face but the majestic melancholy of that face is too deeply impressed on every mind to require descrip- tion. It was justly accounted very strange that the marquis of Buckingham, the frivolous favourite of king James, should have become equally agreeable to the grave temperament of the prince of Wales. Charles was perpetually in the company of that gay courtier, and the king used to consider them both as his children. He always addressed the prince by the epithet " Baby Charles," and in writing to Buckingham, he as invariably subscribed himself as " his dear dad." James liad high abstract notions as to the rank of those who should be- come the wives of princes. He considered the sacred character of a king de- graded by a union with one under his own rank. While his parliament, therefore, wished him to match his son to some small German princess, who had the advantage of being a good protestant, lie contemplated wedding him to the grand-daughter of Charles V., the sister of the reigning king of Spain. Both James and Charles had a sincere sense of the errors of Rome ; but the fatality of matching with a Catholic princess was not then an established maxim in English policy, which it is to be hoped it ever will be in this realm. It was also expected that the Spanish monarch would be instrumental in procuring a restoration of the Palatinate of the Rhine for the son-in-law of the king of Great Britain, who had lost it in consequence of his placing himself at the head of the Bohemians, in a rebellion against the emperor of Germany. The earl of Bristol, British ambassador at Madrid, was carrying on negotiations for this natch, when Charles, with the romantic feeling of youth, resolved to travel into Spain, and woo the young princess in person. In February 1623, he set out with the marquis of Buckingham, and only two other attendants, himself bearing the incognito title of Mr John Smith, a union of the two most familiar CHARLES I. 533 names in England, while the marquis assumed that of Mr Thomas Smith. A Paris, they obtained admission to the rehearsal or practising of a masque, wheiv the prince beheld the princess Henrietta Maria of France, daughter of the il lustrious Henry IV., and sister of the reigning king, Louis XIII., who was ir reality destined to be his wife. It appears, however, that he paid no attention to this lady on the present occasion. His heart being full of the object of hi journey, he directed his whole attention to the queen of France, because she was sister to the Spanish princess, whom he was going to see. In a letter to hi father, he speaks in terms of high expectation of the latter individual, seeing that her sister was the handsomest of twenty women ( Henrietta was of course included ) whom he saw at this masque. That Charles subsequently placed hip .whole affections on a woman whom he now saw with indifference is only another added to the many proofs, that love is among the most transferable of all things. On his arrival at Madrid, he was received in the most courteous manner by the Spanish court, and his gallantry, as might be expected, made a strong impression upon the people. The celebrated Lopez de Vega wrote a canzonet on the occa- sion, of which the first verse has chanced to meet our eye : Carlos Estuardo soy ; Que siendo amor mi quia Al cielo de Espana voy For vor nir estrello Maria. [Charles Stuart am I : Love has guided me far To this fair Spanish sky, To see Mary my star.] But, while he was entertained in the most affectionate manner by the people, and also by their prince, the formal policy of the court dictated that he should hardly ever see his intended bride. The marquis of Buckingham seriously pro- posed that he should send home for some perspective glasses, in order to reduce the distance at which she was kept from him. So far as his opportunities permit- ted him to judge of her personal merits, he admired her very much ; but we sus- pect that if he had fallen in love, as he had.expected, he never would have broken off the match. After spending all the summer at the Spanish court, waiting for a dispensation from the Pope, to enable the princess to marry a protestant, he was suddenly inspired with some disgust, and abruptly announced his intention of returning home. The marquis, now duke, of Buckingham, whose mercurial manners had given great offence to the Spaniards, and who had conceived great offence in return, is supposed to have caused this sudden change of purpose. The earl of Bristol was left to marry the princess in the way of proxy, but with secret instructions not to do so till he should receive further orders. It would be rash to pronounce judgment upon this affair with so little evi- dence as history has left us ; but it seems probable that the match was broken off, and the subsequent war incurred, purely through some freakish caprice of the favourite for upon such things then depended the welfare of the nations. This contemptible court-butterfly ruled with absolute power over both the king and his son, but now chiefly sided with the latter against his father, being sensi- ble that the old king was no longer able to assert his independency against the growing influence of his son. As the English people would have then fought in any quarrel, however unjust, against the Spaniards, simply because they were catholics, the war was very popular ; and Buckingham, who chiefly urged it, became as much the favourite of the nation, as he was of the king and prince. A negotiation was subsequently opened with France, for a match with the prin- 534 CHARLES I. cess Henrietta Maria. On the 27th of March, 1625, Charles succeeded his father as king; and, on the 22d of June, the princess, to whom he had previously been espoused by proxy, arrived in London. It would be foreign to the character of this work to enter into a full detail of the public transactions in which Charles was concerned in his regal character. We shall, therefore, be content with an outline of these transactions. The arrogant pretensions of his father, founded on " the right divine of kings to govern wron"," had roused a degree of jealousy and resistance among the people; whilst the weakness and vacillation of his character, and the pusillanimity of his ad- ministration, had gone far to bring the kingly office into contempt. Charles had imbibed the arbitrary principles of his father, and, without appreciating the proffress of public opinion, resolved, on his accession, to carry out the extravagant theories of James. During the whole reign of the latter, the Commons had kept up a constant warfare with the crown, making every supply which they voted the condition of a new concession to the popular will. The easy nature of James had got over these collisions much better than was to be expected frem the grave and stern temperament of his son. After a few such disputes with his parliament (for the House of Lords always joined with the Commons), Charles concluded his wars, to save all expense, and, resolving to call no more parliaments, endea- voured to support the crown in the best way he could by the use of his pre- rogative. For ten years subsequent to 1628, when the duke of Buckingham was assassinated, he contrived to carry on the state with hardly any assistance from his officers, using chiefly the ill-omened advice of Laud, bishop of London, after- wards archbishop of Canterbury, and also relying considerably upon the queen, to whom he was devotedly attached. The result was to sow distrust and discon- tent throughout the kingdom, to array the subject against the sovereign, and leave no alternative betwixt the euthralment of the people and the destruction of the king. The earnest struggles for religious freedom, in England and Scotland, added a fresh impulse to the growing spirit of civil liberty. Charles rashly encountered the powerful body of nonconformists in England and the sturdy presbyterians of Scotland, and at last sank under the recoil. The dissenters from the Church of England were at this time a rapidly increasing body ; and the church, to maintain her power, thought proper to visit them with some severe sentences. The spirit with which the regular clergy were animated against the nonconformists, may be argued from the fact, that Laud publicly blessed God, when Dr Alexander Leighton was sentenced to lose his ears, and be whipped through the streets of London. The king and the archbishop had always looked with a jealous eye upon Scotland, where the episcopal form of government was as yet only struggling for supremacy over a people who were, almost without exception, presbyterian. In 1633, Charles visited Scotland for the purpose of receiving the crown of his ancient kingdom ; and measures were thenceforth taken, under the counsel of his evil genius Laud, who accompanied him, for enforcing episcopacy upon the Church of Scotland. It was not, however, till 1637, that this bold project was carried into effect. The Scots united themselves in a solemn covenant against this innovation, and at the close of the year 1638, felt themselves so confident in their own strength as to abolish episcopacy in a General Assembly of the church held in Glasgow, and which conducted its proceedings in spite of the prohibition of the king's commissioner. In 1639, his finances being exhausted, Charles was compelled, after the lapse of eleven years, to assemble a parliament, which met in April, 1640. Like their predecessors, the Commons refused to grant supplies till they had stated their grievances. The king hastily dissolved parliament, and prose- CHARLES I. 535 cuted several of the members who had led on the opposition. The king, in spring, 1639, conducted an army of 20,000 to put down the Scots; but they met him with an equal force, and Charles was reduced to a pacification, which left the grounds of quarrel undecided. Next year, Charles raised another army ; but the Scots anticipated him by invading England, and at Newburn on the Tyne overthrew a large detachment of his forces, and immediately after gained posses- sion of Newcastle. All expedients for supporting his army now failed, and he seemed about to be deserted in a great measure by the affections of his subjects. A large portion of the English entered heartily into the views of the Scots. It was agreed by all parties that the northern army should be kept up at a certain monthly pay, till such time as a parliament should settle the grievances of the nation. Charles called together the celebrated assembly which afterwards acquired the name of the Long Parliament. This was only giving collective force and energy to the party which longed for his overthrow. He was obliged to resign his favourite minister,- Strafford, as a victim to this assembly. Some of his other servants only escaped by a timely flight. He was himself obliged to abandon many points of his prerogative which he had hitherto exercised. Fearing that nothing but the sword could decide the quarrel, he paid a visit in autumn, 1641, to Scotland, and endeavoured, by ostensible concessions to the religious prepossessions of that nation, to secure its friendship, or at least its neutrality. In August, 1642, he erected hi* standard at Nottingham, and soon found himself at the head of a considerable army, composed chiefly of the country gentry and their retainers. The parliament, on the other hand, was supported by the city of London, and by the mercantile interest in general. At the first, Charles gained several advantages over the parliament ; but the balance was restored by the Scots, who took side against the king, and, in February 1644, entered England with a large army. The cause of royalty from this time declined, and in May 1646, the king was reduced to the necessity of taking refuge in the camp of the Scottish, army at Newark. He was treated with respect, but regarded as a prisoner, and after some abortive negotiations, was, January 30, 1647, surrendered to the commissioners of the English parliament, on the payment of the arrears due to the Scottish army. If Charles would have now consented to abolish episcopacy, and reign as a limited monarch, he would have been supported by the presbyterian party, and might have escaped a violent death. But his predilections induced him to resist every encroachment upon that form of ecclesiastical polity ; and he therefore lost, in a great measure, the support of the presbyterians, who, though the body that had begun the war, were now sincerely anxious for a pacification, being in some alarm respecting a more violent class, who had latterly sprung up, and who, from their denial of all forms of church government, were styled Independents. This latter party, which reckoned almost the whole army in its numbers, eventually acquired an ascendancy over the more moderate presbyterians ; and, the latter being forcibly excluded from parliament, the few individuals who remained formed themselves into a court cf justice, before which the king was arraigned. Having been found guilty of, appearing in arms against the parliament, Charles was by this court condemned to suffer death as a traitor, which sentence was put in execution, January 30, 1649, in front of his own palace of Whitehall, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and twenty-fifth of his reign. The Scottish subjects of Charles had made strenuous exertions to avert this fearful issue ; and by none was his death mourned with a deeper sorrow than by the very Covenanters who had risen in arms to repel his invasion upon their liberty of conscience. It was indeed impossible not to deplore the fate of that un- fortunate and misguided monarch; but it cannot be doubted that it wasmainly brought 536 WALTER CHEPMAN. about by his own insincerity and obstinacy. By his queen, who survived him for some years, he left six children, of whom the two eldest, Charles and James, were successively kings of Great Britain ; a son and a daughter died in early youth ; and his two remaining daughters, Mary and Henrietta, were respectively married to the prince of Orange, and to the duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. In literature Charles is entitled to a high rank. There was published after his death, a work entitled EIKON BASILIKE, which contained a series of re- flections proceeding from himself, respecting various situations in which he was placed towards the close of his life. This, in a short space of time, went through upwards of forty editions, and it every where excited a keen interest in the fate of the king and high admiration of his mental gifts. Although for a long time sus- pected to have been written by another hand, it appears incontestibly proved by Dr Christopher Wordsworth, in his work on this subject, (published in 1824,) to have been his own express composition. CHEPMAN, WALTER, who appears to have been chiefly concerned in intro- ducing the art of printing into Scotland, was a servant of king James IV., who patronised him in that undertaking. None of the honours of learning are known to have been attached to the name of Walter Chepman ; but it is to be inferred that his office in the royal household was of a clerical or literary character, as we find that on the 21st of February, 1496, the lord treasurer enters the follow- ing disbursement in his books: " Gifleu to a boy to rynne fra Edinburgh to Linlithq, to Watte Chepman, to signet twa letteris to pas to Woddis, I2d." His name is frequently mentioned in this curious record ; for instance, in August, 1503, amidst a variety of expenses " pro servitoribus " on the occasion of the king's marriage, eight pounds ten shillings are given for " five elne Inglis (English) claith to Walter Chepman, ilk clue 34 shillings," which may show the high consideration in which this individual was held. Walter Chepman is found at a somewhat later period in the condition of a merchant and burgess of Edinburgh, and joining with one Andro Millar, another merchant, in the busi- ness of a printer. It appears to have been owing to the urgent wishes of the king that Scotland was first favoured with the possession of a printing press. A grant under the privy seal, dated in 1507, recites the causes and objects of this measure in the following terms : JAMES, &c. To al and sindrj our officiaris liegis and subdittis quham it efferis, quhais knawlage thir our lettres salcum, greting ; wit ye that forsamekill as our lovittis servitouris Walter Chepman and Andro Millar burgessis of our burgh of Edinburgh, has, at our instance and request, for our plesour, the honour and proffit of our Realme and leigis, takin on thame to furnis and bring hame ane prent, with all stuff belangand tharto, and expert men to use the samyne, for imprenting within our Realme of the bukis of our Lawis, actis of parliament, croniclis, mess bukis, and portuus efter the use of our Healme, with addicions and legendis of Scottish sanctis, now gaderit to be ekit tharto, and al utheris bukis that salbe sene necessar, and to sel the sammyn for competent pricis, be our avis and discrecioun, thair labouris and expens being considerit ; And because we wnderstand that this cannot be perfurnist without rycht greit cost Labour and expens, we have granted and promittit to thame that thai sail nocht be hurt nor prevenit tharon be ony utheris to tak copyis of ony bukis furtht of our Realme, to ger imprent the samyne in utheris countreis, to be brocht and sauld agane within our Realme, to cause the said Walter and Andro tyne thair gret labour and expens ; And als It is divisit and thocht expedient be us and our consall, that in tyme cuming mess bukis, nianualis, matyne bukis, and portuus bukis, efter our awin scottis use, and with legendis of Scottis sanctis, as is now gaderit and ekit be ane Reverend fader in god, and our traist consalour WALTER CHEPMAN. 537 Williame bischope of abirdene and utheris, be usit generaly within al our Realme alssone as the sammyn may be imprented and providit, and that no nianer of sic bukis of Salisbury use be brocht to be sauld within our Realme in tym cum- ing ; and gif ony dois in the contrar, that thai sal tyne the sammyne ; Quharfor we charge straitlie and coinmandis yow al and sindrj our officiaris, Hegis, and subdittis, that nane of yow tak apon hand to do ony thing incontrar this our awnpromitt, devise and ordinance, in tyme cuming, under the pane of escheting of the bukis, and punishing of thair persons bringaris tharof within our Realme, in contrar this our statut, with al vigour as efferis. Geven under our prive Sel at Edinburgh, the xv day of September, and of our Regne the xx" yer. (Registrum Sec. Sig. iii. 129.) This typographical business would appear to have been in full operation be- fore the end of 1 507, as, on the 22d of December that year, we find the royal treasurer paying fifty shillings for " 3 prentit bukes to the king, tane fra Andro Millaris wyrt!" The Cowgate, a mean street, now inhabited by the least instructed class of the citizens of Edinburgh, was the place where that grand engine of knowledge was established ; as appears from the imprints of some of Chepman and 3Ii liar's publications, and also from a passage in the Traditions of Edinburgh, where the exact site of the house is thus made out : " In the lower part of the church-yard [ of St Giles, adjoining the Cowgate ] there was a small place of worship, denominated the Chapel of Holyrood. Walter Chepman, the first printer in Edinburgh, in 1528, endowed an altar in this chapel with his tenement in the Cowgate ; and, by the tenor of this charter, we are enabled to point out very nearly the residence of this remarkable person. The tenement is thus described : ' All and haill this tenement of laud, back and foir, with houses, biggings, yards, and well, thereof, lying in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, on the south side thereof, near the said chapel, betwixt the lands of James Lamb on the east, and the lands of John Aber on the west, the arable lands, called Wairam's croft, on the south, and the said street on the north part.' " It is probable that the site is now covered by the new bridge thrown across the Cowgate at that point. In the course of a few years, Chepman and Millar produced works, 1 of which hardly any other set is known to exist than that preserved in the Advocates' Library. The privilege granted to Chepman and Millar was of a rigidly exclusive kind for at this early period the system of monopolizing knowledge, which is now an absurdity and a disgrace, was a matter of necessity. In January t l 509, we find Walter Chepman asserting the right of his patent against various indivi- duals who had infringed upon it by importing books into the country. The lords of council thus re-inforced the privilege they had formerly granted to him : ANENT the complaint maid by Walter Chepman, that quhar he, at the desyre of our soverane lord, furnist and brocht hame ane prent and prentaris, for prenting of croniclis, missalis, portuuss, and utheris buikis within this realme, 1 The Porteousof Nobleness, translatit out of Ffrenche in Soottis, be Maister Andro Cadyou. The Knightly tale of Golagras and Gawane. Sir Glamore. Balade: In all our Gar- tlenne growes their no flowres. The Golden Targe ; compilit be Maister William Dunbar. The JMayng, or Disport of Chaucere. The flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy. The Traite of Orpheus Kinil law. His acquirements were at an early period very great, especially in the belles lettros, and to a less degree in history and metaphysics. He entered at the bar in 1768, and was the contemporary and intimate friend of some of the most distinguished men of the last age. Robert Blair, afterwards lord president, Alexander Abercromby, afterwards lord Abercromby, along with Craig and some others, held for some years a private meeting once every week, for mutual im- provement in their legal studies. It is remarkable that, at the commencement of Mr Pitt's administration in 1784, Blair, Abercromby, and Craig were appointed together to be depute advocates under Sir Ilay Campbell, who was at the same time nominated lord advocate. Mr Craig held this office till 1787, when he was nominated sheriff of A yrshire. On the death of lord Hailes in 1792, Mr Craig was appointed to succeed him on the bench, on which occasion he assumed 1 Dr Craig was author of an Essay on the Life of Christ, and of Twenty Discourses on various subjects. WILLIAM CRAIG. 577 the designation of lord Craig. In 1795, he succeeded lord Henderland as a judge of the court of justiciary. In the concluding number of " the Mirror," which appeared on the 17th of May 1780, it is mentioned that " the idea of publishing a periodical paper in Edinburgh took its rise in a company of gentlemen, whom particular circum- stances of connection brought frequently together. Their discourse often turned upon subjects of manners, of taste, and of literature. By one of those accidental resolutions of which the origin cannot easily be traced, it was determined to put their thoughts in writing, and to read them for the entertainment of each other. Their essays assumed the form, and, soon after, some one gave them the name of a periodical publication. The writers of it were naturally associated ; and their meetings increased the importance, as well as the number of their produc- tions. Cultivating letters in the midst of business, composition was to them an amusement only ; that amusement was heightened by the audience which this society afforded ; the idea of publication suggested itself as productive of still higher entertainment It was not, however, without diffidence that such a re- solution was taken. From that and several circumstances, it was thought proper to observe the strictest secrecy with regard to the authors ; a purpose in which they have been so successful, that at this moment, the very publisher of the work knows only one of their number, to whom the conduct of it was intrusted." It is now to be mentioned, upon the credit of the sole survivor of the asso- ciation above alluded to, that the first idea of starting this periodical work oc- curred to Mr Craig, who, next to Mr Mackenzie, was the most zealous of them all in the cultivation of the belles lettres. The remaining persons concerned were Mr Alexander Abercromby, of whom a memoir has been given in the pre- sent dictionary, Mr Robert Cullen, afterwards lord Cullen, Mr Macleod Banna- tyne, afterwards lord Bannatyne, Mr George Home, afterwards lord Wedderburn, and one of the principal clerks of session, Mr William Gordon of-Newhall, and Mr George Ogilvy, both also advocates, but of whom the first died, and the latter fell into bad health before having made any contribution to the Mirror. Mr Mackenzie was the only individual unconnected with the bar. The associa- tion was at first termed the Tabernacle ; but when the resolution of publishing was adopted, it assumed the name of the Mirror Club, from the title of the projected paper. It was resolved to commit the business of publishing to Mr Creech, the well-known bookseller, and the duty of communicating with him, and of the general superintendence of the work, was devolved on Mr Macken- zie. The club used to meet once a-week, sometimes in one tavern, sometimes in another, in order that their proceedings might be less liable to the observation of their acquaintance. A list of their haunts will tell strangely in the ears of those who, thinking of the Mirror as the pink of elegance in literature, might expect to find that every circumstance connected with its composition was alike elegant. The club met, for instance, sometimes in Clerihugh's, in Writer's court, sometimes in Somers's, opposite the Guardhouse in the High street, some- times in Stewart's oyster-house in the Old Fish-market close, and fully as often, perhaps, in Lucky Dunbar's, a moderate and obscure house, situated in an alley leading betwixt Forrester's and Libberton's Wynd. On these occasions, any mem- ber who had written a paper since the last meeting, produced it to be read and considered. But, as a general invitation had been held out for contributions from persons not members of the club, and a box placed at Mr Creech's shop for re- ceiving them, the papers so contributed, as well as those produced by the mem- bers, were read over and considered, and a selection made of those proposed to be adopted. Among these occasional contributors were several individuals of great respectability, of whom we may mention lord Hailes, professor Richard- I. 4 1> 578 DAVID CRAWFORD. son of Glasgow, Dr Henry, author of the History of Great Britain, and Mr David Hume, now one of the barons of exchequer. Some other papers of no inconsiderable merit were supposed to be from ladies. The Mirror was com- menced on the 23d of January, 1779, and finished with the 110th number on the 27th of May, 1780. It appeared in one small folio sheet, which was sold at three half pence, and though not above four hundred were ever sold of any particular number, the public approbation was so high as to demand the imme- diate republication of the whole in three volumes duodecimo. Mr Craig's contributions to the Mirror, which were the most numerous, next to those of Mr Mackenzie, are indicated in a later edition of the work: To the Lounger, which was started some years after by the same club, he also contributed many excellent papers. Lord Craig, who possessed originally a very weak constitution, enjoyed so poor a state of health in his latter years as to be obliged to resign his place on the justiciary bench. He died on the 8th of July, 1813. The mental quali- fications of this eminent person were of a very high order. Although his prac- tice at the bar had never been very extensive, he was much esteemed in his character as a judge, his decisions being remarkable for their clearness and pre- cision, while his habits were of a singularly industrious order, considering the state of his health. In private life he was beloved on account of his gentle, unassuming manners, and his eminently benevolent and sociable disposition. CRAWFORD, DAVID, of Drumsoy, near Glasgow, historiographer to queen Anne, was born in 1665, and educated to the bar. Having abandoned profes- sional pursuits in a great measure, for the sake of studying Scottish antiquities and history, he was appointed historiographer royal for Scotland by queen Anne, to whom he was probably recommended by his being a zealous tory and Jaco- bite. His political prepossessions, which, as usual, extended to a keen zeal in behalf of queen Mary, induced him in 1706 to publish, at London, his well- known work, entitled " Memoirs of the affairs of Scotland, containing a full and impartial account of the Revolution in that kingdom, begun in 1567, faithfully compiled from an authentic MS." The avowed purpose of this publication was to furnish an antidote to the pernicious tendency of Buchanan's history. The substance of the work, he says he derived from an ancient MS. presented to him by Sir James Baird of Saughtonhall, and which seemed to have been composed by a contemporary of the events described. In executing the task which he had imposed upon himself, the learned editor appears to have acted after the manner of a good partizan. In order that his work might the more perfectly meet the calumnies of Buchanan, he expunged from it every passage which told in behalf of the views taken by that writer, and introduced others instead from the con- temporary tory writers. The work was reprinted by Goodall in 1767, and still continues to be a popular narrative of the events of the four Regencies. In 1804, Mr Malcolm Laing, author of the History of Scotland during the seven- teenth century, having obtained possession of the original MS. used by Craw- ford, published it, with a preface, denouncing the historiographer-royal as a rank impostor, inasmuch as he had set off that as a work of authority which had been vitiated for party purposes by his own hand. The same view has been taken of Mr Crawford's character by Mr Thomas Thomson, in the preface to a new print of the MS. for the use of the Bannatyne Club, which appeared in 1825, under the tide of " The History and life of king James the sext." With deference to these writers, it may be suggested, in Crawford's defence, that his work was never pretended to be a faithful transcript of the original MS. except on the title page, where it is so stated by the bookseller ad captandum, in obvious contradiction of the statement made by the editor within. The work comes WILLIAM CREECH. 579 forth with the character of a special pleading avowed upon the face of it ; and those who depended uj>on such a refacciamento as upon a faithful contemporary chronicle, after the account given of it in the editor's preface, had only to blame their own simplicity. The truth is, Crawford's Memoirs, when fully considered with a regard to the ideas prevalent respecting the purity of historical narrative at the beginning of the last century, will only appear an imposture to an op- posite partizan. Crawford died in 1726. CREECH, WILLIAM, an eminent bookseller, was the son of the Rev. William Creech, minister of Newbattle, a most respectable clergyman, and of Miss Mary Buley, an English lady, related to a family of rank in Devonshire. He was born in the year 1745, and received a complete classical education at the school at Dalkeith, which was taught by Mr Barclay, a preceptor of some distinction, who also educated the first viscount Melville, and the lord chancellor Lough- borough. He was at first designed for the medical profession, but eventually was bound apprentice to Mr Kincaid, a bookseller in Edinburgh. In the year 1766, Mr Creech went upon a tour of the continent, in company with Lord Kilmaurs, son of the Earl of Glencairn. After his return, in 1771, he was received by his former master into partnership, and finally, in 1773, left in full possession of the business. For forty-four years, Mr Creech carried on by far the most extensive bookselling concern in Scotland, publishing the writings of many of the distinguished men who adorned Scottish literature at the close of the eighteenth century. His shop, which occupied a conspicuous situation in the centre of the old town, and yet, by a curious chance, command- ed a view thirty miles into the country, was, during all that long period, the Rialto of literary commerce and intercourse, while his house in the neighbour- hood also attracted its more select crowds at the breakfast hour, under the name of Creech's levee. While thus busied in sending the works of his friends into the world, he occasionally contributed articles to the newspapers and other periodical works, generally in reference to the passing follies of the day, of which he was a most acute and sarcastic observer. During his own life-time, he published a volume of these trifles, under the title of " Edinburgh Fugitive Pieces," which was re-published with his name, and with some additions, after his death. He was one of the founders of the Speculative Society in 1764. Mr Creech's style of composition is only worthy of being spoken of with respect to its ironical humour, which was certainly its only feature of distinction. This humour, though said to have been very powerful when aided by the charm of his own voice and manner in conversation, is of too cold, wiry, and artificial a kind, to have much effect in print. It must also be mentioned, that, although very staid and rigid in style, it involves many allusions by no means of a decor- ous nature. In private life, Mr Creech shone conspicuously as a pleasant companion and conversationist, being possessed of an inexhaustible fund of droll anecdote, which he could narrate in a characteristic manner, and with unfailing effect He thus secured general esteem, in despite, it appeared, of extraordinary fondness for money, and penuriousness of habits, which acted to the preclusion, not only of all benevolence of disposition, but even of the common honesty of discharging his obligations when they were due. He died, unmarried, on the 1 4th of Jan- uary, 1815. GLASGOW: W. O. BLACKIZ AHD CO., PRINTEKS, VILLATKLD. DATE DUE PRINTEDIN USA 000 624973" tili