frontery, as well as imprudence, with which he dared to avow a want of all principle and honour. He showed me two contrasted characters of Alderman Beckford, the idol of the mob, which he was to insert in the antagonist newspapers most in circulation, one a panegyric, and the other a libel, and for each of which he expected to receive the reward of a guinea. However exceptionable Dr Stuart's character, it must be acknowledged that he possessed transcendent intellectual talents, a powerful understanding, a penetrating discernment, with a capacity for patient

laborious research. But what I most admired, and what was less known, was his facility and quickness in composing -the more extraordinary, because his style has so much the appearance of art and elaboration. I have often seen him, after revelling through the night, without sleep or refreshment, take the pen in his hand, and in a few minutes write out an article for a newspaper or review, which was sent to the press without correction. To me he was friendly, and even flattering. He strenuously urged me to resign my charge at Minto, and to become an associate in the trade of authorship, with warm promises of his interest and patronage. I believe he was sincere, and would have kept his promise, but only so long as I might have acquiesced in a subaltern department. Happening to mention to Sir Gilbert Elliot the literary company with

which I associated, he recommended to me never to think of making authorship a profession, because persons, however celebrated for genius and erudition, who devoted themselves entirely to mercenary composition, seldom preserved purity of principle, or obtained respectability of character. His observation I have seen verified in the fate of several of my acquaintances of this description."

Gilbert Stuart was a fine specimen of the literary savage of that day. It is of him that the story is told of a journey with some companions from Edinburgh to Musselburgh, which the frequent occasions for "moistening clay" protracted for several days; and one of the party having fallen asleep near a steam-engine, and awakening before a huge fire, with dusky figures, banging iron doors, and clanking chains, was heard to mutter, "Good God, is it come to this at last?" Some anecdotes of him will be

found in an otherwise dry book, Kerr's Memoirs of Smellie. As, for instance, when sailing up the Firth of Forth, he saw dolphins rolling about, and asked what they fed "Salmon and salt water,"

upon.

was the answer, which elicited the touching commentary, "Not bad food-but, heaven help us, what drink!" There is a good deal about him in another book not amenable to the charge of dryness, Disraeli's Calamitics of Authors, which quotes highly characteristic passages from his letters. Of all the pens that ever had been dipped in gall his is about the bitterest. His usual composition consists of the broadest of rolling sentences; but when he gets into controversy, his composition absolutely sputters with the heat of his diabolical temper. After migrating in disgust from Edinburgh to London, and coming back in equal disgust from London to Edinburgh to establish a Review, in which all his enemies were to be lashed or stabbed, we find him breaking out thus:-" It is my constant fate to be disappointed in everything I attempt. I do not think I ever had a wish that was gratified, and never dreaded an event that did not come. With this felicity of fate, I wonder how the devil I could turn projector. I am now sorry that I left London, and the moment I have money enough to carry me back to it, I shall set off. I mortally detest and abhor this place and everybody in it. Never was there a city that had so much pretensions to knowledge, and that had so little of it. The solemn foppery and the gross stupidity of the Scotch literati are perfectly insupportable. I shall drop my idea of a Scotch newspaper. Nothing will do in this country that has common sense in it. Only cant, hypocrisy, and superstition will flourish here. A curse on the country, and on all the men, women, and children in it!" This is a pretty extensive excommunication. But to our notion Gilbert comes out still stronger when he

has his one man before him to be extirpated, than in these aggregate denunciations. One of his great missions in life was to suppress or exterminate worthy Dr Henry, the author of the solid History of the British Empire, which is so well known from its useful arrangement. Justly alarmed at a proposal by the best-natured of rivals to review Henry's book, he wrote to a confederate, saying: "David Hume wants to review Henry, but that task is so precious that I will undertake it myself. Moses, were he to ask it as a favour, should not have it-no, not the man after God's own heart.

To-morrow morning Henry sets off for London with immense hopes of selling his History. I wish sincerely that I could enter Holborn the same hour with him. He should have a repeated fire to combat with. I entreat that you may be so kind as to let him feel some of your thunder: I shall never forget the favour. If Whitaker is in London he could give a blow. Paterson will give him a knock. Strike by all means. The wretch will tremble, grow pale, and return with a consciousness of his debility.

. I could wish that you knew for certain his being in London before you strike the first blow; an inquiry at Cadell's will give this. When you have an enemy to attack I shall in return give my best assistance, and shall aim at him a mortal blow, and rush forward to his overthrow, though the flames of hell should start up to oppose me." And at a later date :-"I see every day that what is written to a man's disparagement is never forgot nor forgiven. Poor Henry is at the point of death, and his friends declare that I have killed him. I received the information as a compliment, and begged they would not do me so much honour."

Another grand object of Gilbert's almost ludicrous hatred was Dr Robertson, and his method of giving vent to it was still more preposterous. It was done, not by attack,

but by rivalry. No sooner had the Principal raised for himself a literary monument by patient labour, than there arose, as if by one touch of Gilbert's magic wand, a rival duplicate, seemingly endowed with the same results of learning and research, and certainly glittering with a still more gorgeous display of the same lofty rhetoric in which the historian was an adept. The result was marvellous. There have been few such successful impostures in the world as Gilbert Stuart. He seemed to have come to his work so thoroughly saturated with all the learning that was to be had concerning it and about it-his matter was so happily arranged-he held his conclusions with so competent, so easy, and so strong a grasp above all, the words came in with such a full flowing roll at his command, that he may be said to have entirely imposed on a generation. He is now so little reputed that one is surprised that Robertson should have found it necessary to speak with such an air of indignant vexation as in the following remarks, which, by the way, afford a curious hint of the manner in which Stuart shortened the way for himself through the intricacies of historical investigation:—

"We had also some talk about Gilbert Stuart. Dr Robertson spoke with just indignation of that notorious writer's treatment of himself. He said, 'Every man who has written history knows that the most difficult part of his work has been the arrangement, but Gilbert Stuart saved himself that trouble, and followed tions on the middle ages were also stolen my arrangement exactly. His dissertafrom me; but what, above all, was detestable, at a time when I was fighting for a cause so sacred as religious liberty, he concluded his History of the Reformation with reflections evidently intended sonal danger.' to expose me to popular odium and per

The passage here alluded to will be found by any person who thinks it worth looking for at the end of Stuart's History of the Reformation, which it brings to shore with one grand final roll like the breaking

it.

of the great wave that at the pole began.

"The

One of the most pleasing features in Dr Somerville's book, is his affectionate respect for Robertson. His is a fame that has stood out the more fully and substantially the longer it has existed, and the more closely its sources have been examined. The obligations which the science of history owes to him can never be over-estimated. It is interesting to remark how his historical powers developed themselves as he worked. The form in which he started was by no means propitious. first ages," he says, "of the Scottish history are dark and fabulous. Nations as well as men arrive at maturity by degrees, and the events which happened during their infancy or early youth cannot be recollected, and deserve not to be remembered." This is a piece of the thorough conventional Montesquieu-philosophical style of the age, which would have been worthy of his enemy Stuart. There can be no facts truly established about the condition and actions of men in any age that are not valuable all the more valuable for the difficulty of getting at them. And the earnest investigator is seen in the end to get at something-if at nothing better, he will at least be able to set forth the boundary better between the known and the unknown; and this would have been a precious service to the early his tory of his own country at that time, which Robertson could have admirably performed. The history he did undertake, in fact, was no less under the ban of philosophy, as the worthless memorial of barbarous habits and actions, deserving only to be passed over in some wellturned periods about the feebleness of the crown, the turbulence of a lawless aristocracy, and the degraded ignorance of the people. Robertson got into the heart of his work, his own natural healthy strength developed itself, and he compelled the world to read and admire the despised history of his country by the way in which he told

As

It is said that he did not investigate deep enough-that he did not read a sufficient number of manuscripts. Certainly he did not parade his reading; but if it was so narrow, then his sagacity must have been all the more marvellous, for no one, since his day, excepting Scott himself, has so thoroughly caught the spirit of the times and country of which he writes. And so in that grand survey of feudal Europe, which was modestly placed as an introduction to the History of Charles V. Many people have gone over the same ground, and have carried their researches farther than he did, and brought out more minute particulars about the feudal laws and the condition of the country; but they have not diminished the general truth of his broad picture, nor have they given any considerable amount of information to the general reader which he does not find in Robertson's pages. It is extremely valuable to possess even the impromptu conversational remarks of so sagacious a man on any of those portions of history which he has not rendered to us in his own printed works. Dr Somerville has, perhaps unconscious of his full merits in the matter, done a service to literature that may stand in rivalry with his big histories, in preserving to us the conversational remarks of his friend on the men and events to which his volumes refer. Robertson's tabletalk on the tendency of British history, from the Revolution to the accession of the House of Hanover, will be found in chapter seven. The passages are rather too long for quotation, and we refer the reader to the original, simply remarking that they are doubly valuable on account of the importance of the epoch to which they refer, and the sagacity of the man whose words they record.

The following is an account of Robertson's rise to the leadership of the Church of Scotland :—

"Dr Cuming had long been regarded as the ecclesiastical minister under the

patronage of Archibald Duke of Argyle,

and had been zealously instrumental in supporting the right of patrons in every case of disputed settlement that came before the church courts. He was chosen moderator of the General Assembly in 1752, on the occasion of the deposition of Mr Gillespie, which was branded by the popular party as the most vindictive measure that ever had been adopted to overawe opposition to presentations. The overpowering eloquence, however, displayed by Dr Robertson in the debate on that question, decided his unrivalled superiority as a public speaker, and soon secured for that eminent person the position of leader of the General Assembly. It was at this time suspected that offended pride and jealousy was the principal cause of the change of sentiments avowed by Dr Cuming and some of his adherents.'

Carlyle goes over the same ground, and his concluding remarks on Cuming's qualifications for ecclesiastical leadership give a touch of nature and practice to the more decorous statement of his rival. "Dr Patrick

Cuming was at this time at the head of the Moderate interest; and, had his temper been equal to his talents, might have kept it long, for he had both learning and sagacity, and very agreeable conversation, with a constitution able to bear the conviviality of the times."-(P. 257.) Of some rivals and opponents of Robertson we have the following sketches:

"Dr Dick was, beyond all competition, the ablest antagonist Dr Robertson had to contend with during the long period of his leadership of the Assembly. He was eminently fitted to excel as a public speaker, by extensive and accurate information on every subject of debate, a penetrating discernment, which enabled him to perceive what was vulnerable in the position of his opponents, a complete knowledge of judicial forms and precedents, great fluency aad readiness of elocution, set off with prepossessing dignity of address. In his early life he was understood to be a friend to the interests of the Moderate party; and the supposed change of his principles, political and ecclesiastical, was imputed by his adversaries to fretfulness or illhumour, occasioned by neglect, of which, indeed, he had but too much reason to complain. But from whatever cause arising, it detracted from the respectabi

lity of his character and the weight of his personal influence; and as he was seldom returned a member of the General Assembly, and often prevented from attending the inferior courts by bad health, he may be regarded as an admired rather than an efficient leader of the popular party. There were few more weighty speakers in the church courts on the popular side than Dr Witherspoon, minister of Paisley. His manner was inanimate and drawling; but the depth of his judgment, the solidity of his arguments, and the aptitude with which they were illustrated and applied, never failed to produce a strong impression on the Assembly. To singular sagacity he united a large share of sarcastic wit, which was displayed in several of his publications, but particularly in the Ecclesiastical Characteristics—a ludicrous and acrimonious description of the principles, political sentiments, and private characters of many of the moderate clergy. Mr Fairbairn, minister of Dumbarton, was remarkable for rough petulant eloquence in attacking the measures proposed by Dr Robertson, and the readiness and vivacity of his replies and extemporaneous speeches. But

as there was too obvious an intention to make a show of his own superior talents, and to secure applause rather than to produce conviction, he did not render

The

essential service to his associates. same reproach attached to most of the zealous declamations on the side of opyounger members, distinguished by their position. A great portion of their speeches consisted in a sort of manifesto, or declaration of principles, with respect to ecclesiastical policy, and the best mode of supplying vacant parishes, which was generally irrelevant to the questions under discussion, and tiresome to impartial hearers of every party. And this was sometimes given with such confident protestations of their own integrity and disinterestedness, as seemed to exclude their opponents from all pretensions to the same honourable motives.

"Mr Crosbie, the advocate, frequently returned a member of the General Assembly as a ruling elder, was by far the most respectable and powerful lay champion for the popular interest. He was a man of the strictest honour, and wise and learned above most of his profession. His zeal, his information, and manly eloquence, strenuously exerted in support of the right of the people to elect their own minister, revived the zeal of his party, and reinvigorated their hopes of success, which had begun to languish from the control of the servants of Gov

ernment, and the general disapprobation of the laity of rank and independent fortune. Mr Crosbie possessed a vigorous constitution; but, being too much addicted to social festivity, he sank into intemperate habits, which brought him to his grave at an untimely age.'

Doubtless Dr Somerville would have been the last person in the world to object to a comparison of these passages with the rough rambling but more genuine remarks passed by Carlyle on the same men; and to give the reader an opportunity of comparing the method of the two autobiographists, we append a few of these:

"The future life and public character of Dr Witherspoon are perfectly known. At the time I speak of he was a good scholar, far advanced for his age, very sensible and shrewd, but of a disagreeable temper, which was irritated by a flat voice and awkward manner, which prevented his making an impression on his companions of either sex that was at all adequate to his ability. This defect, when he was a lad, stuck to him when he grew up to manhood, and so much roused his envy and jealousy, and made him take a road to distinction very dif

ferent from that of his more successful companions.

"I used sometimes to go with him for a day or two to his father's house at Gifford Hall, where we passed the day in fishing, to be out of reach of his father, who was very sulky and tyrannical, but who, being much given to gluttony, fell asleep early, and went always to bed at nine, and, being as fat as a porpoise, was not to be awaked, so that we had three or four hours of liberty every night to amuse ourselves with the daughters of the family, and their cousins who resorted to us from the village, when the old man was gone to rest. This John loved of all things; and this sort of company he enjoyed in greater perfection when he returned my visits, when we had still more companions of the fair sex, and no restraint from an austere father; so that I always considered the austerity of manners and aversion to social joy which he affected afterwards, as the arts of hypocrisy and ambition; for he had a strong and enlightened understanding, far above enthusiasm, and a temper that did not seem liable to it.

"The death of Hyndman was a disappointment to Robertson in the management of the Church, which he had

now in view. By his preference of Hyndman, he had provoked Dick, who was a far better man, and proved a very formidable and vigorous opponent; for he joined the Wild or High-flying party, and by moderating their councils and defending their measures as often as he could, made them more embarrassing than if they had been allowed to follow their own measures.

"Robertson had now Dr Dick as his stated opponent, who would have been very formidable had he not been tied up by his own principles, which were firm in support of presentations, and by his not having it in his power to be a member of Assembly more than once in four or five years, on account of the strict rotation observed by the Presbytery of Edinburgh.

"Andrew Crosbie, the advocate, was another constant and able opponent of Dr Robertson and his friends, though hampered a little by the law of patron

age. His maternal uncle, Lord Tinwald, the Justice-Clerk, who was his patron, being dead, he wished to gain employment by pleasing the popular side. Fairbairn, the minister of Dumbarton, was another opponent-brisk and foul-mouthed, who stuck at nothing, and was endowed with a rude popular eloquence; but he was a mere hussar, who had no steady views to direct him. He was a member of every Assembly, and spoke in every cause, but chiefly for plunder that is, applause and dinners -for he did not seem to care whether he lost or won. Robertson's soothing manner prevented his being hard-mouthed with him.

"Andrew Crosbie, advocate, the son of a Provost of that name who had been a private supporter of Provost Bell, in opposition to the party of the Tories, thought this a proper time to attempt an overturn of the present magistrates and managers, and put his own friends in their room, who would either be directed by Crosbie's maternal uncle, Lord Tinwald, then Justice-Clerk, and far advanced in years, or gain the credit and advantage of governing the town under the Duke of Queensberry. Crosbie was a clever fellow, and young and adventurous, and a good inflammatory speaker, he soon raised the commons of the town almost to a pitch of madness against Dickson."

As

Here follows Dr Somerville's description of another ecclesiastical leader, who, if not justly more distinguished, affords, in the strange texture of his character, a better