DAVID MACBETH, was born at Musselburgh in Mid-Lothian on the 5th of July 1798. He received his elementary education at the grammar school of his native town, and was, at the age of thirteen, apprenticed for a term of four years to Dr Stewart, a medical practitioner there. At the conclusion of his apprenticeship he completed his medical course at the University of Edinburgh, and received his diploma of surgeon in 1816. Moir had originally intended to enter the army, but the recent peace not offering much encouragement in that quarter, he returned home and spent his leisure in literary pursuits. During his laborious apprenticeship he had found time to cultivate those pursuits in which he afterwards gained a name, and had even made his first appearance as an author in some of the local magazines as early as 1812. Towards the close of the year in which he left college he put forth a small anonymous publication entitled The Bombardment of Algiers, and other Poems, which was not characterized either by originality or power. In 1817 the young surgeon joined Dr Brown as a partner in an extensive and laborious medical practice in the town of Musselburgh and its neighbourhood. While Moir entered upon the duties of his profession with great zeal, he nevertheless succeeded in snatching occasional moments to gratify his unquenchable thirst for literary studies. He had already been a frequent contributor in prose and verse to the Scots Magazine and to Constable's Edinburgh Magazine, when he made his debut in the pages of Blackwood as an occasional prose essayist, but especially as a writer of grave and comic verse. The clever effusions of The Eve of St Jerry, The Ancient Waggonere, &c., are now known to have been written by Moir, although these, as well as many others of his jocose pieces, were generally ascribed to Maginn. His serious verses bore the signature Δ, which gave origin to his literary cognomen of "Delta." This connection with Blackwood ceased only with his death. In 1823 Moir made the acquaintance of John Galt the novelist, who had come to reside in his neighbourhood; and so intimate did their friendship become, that when Galt was called suddenly off to America before completing his Lost of the Lairds, the novelist commissioned Moir to write the concluding chapters of that work. The Legend of Genevieve, with other Tales and Poems, were collected from the various magazines in which they had originally appeared, and published, with additions, in a separate volume in 1824. This work, while generally well received by the press, met with but a very limited sale. In 1824 Moir commenced to publish in the pages of Blackwood his novel of The Autobiography of Maunsie Wauch, a work which delineated with much quaint humour and quiet power some of the most subtle peculiarities of the Scotch character, and which gained for its author very considerable reputation. Moir was warmly pressed at this time by his friends in Edinburgh to remove to the Scottish metropolis, where he had at once the prospect of a more lucrative practice and a more extensive circle of literary friends. The scenes of his early days, however, had a strong hold on the poet, and he regarded the poor among whom he had laboured so long as having peculiar claims upon him. He accordingly resolved to abide by his provincial practice, which entailed so very great drudgery, that for more than ten successive years Moir never slept a single night beyond the scene of his labours. He married in 1829, and published two years afterwards his Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine, being a view of the progress of the Healing Art among the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabians; a work which was well received by the members of his own profession. On the visitation of the cholera in 1832, Moir put forth extraordinary exertions to check the progress of that virulent and mortal disease; and as secretary of the Board of Health at Musselburgh, gave to the public his Practical Observations on Malignant Cholera, and Proofs of the Contagion of Malignant Cholera. These pamphlets met with great success, and were recognised, even by those who differed from them, as very masterly productions. In the autumn of 1832 Delta attended the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, and afterwards visited London, where he met Coleridge and other men of literary note. On the death of his friend Dr Macnish in 1837, Moir collected together the fugitive pieces of "the Modern Pythagorean," and published them with a Life of the author. A few years later he was called to perform a similar service to the memory of his lamented friend Galt. Early in 1843 Delta circulated privately, and then published, his Domestic Verses, which contained some touching pieces full of true tenderness and beauty. In the summer of 1846 he met with a severe accident by being thrown from a carriage, which confined him for months and rendered him lame for life. Moir had always taken a special interest in antiquarian studies, and on the publication of the new edition of The Statistical Account of Scotland, he supplied an interesting paper for that work on the antiquities of his native parish of Inversesk. In 1851 he delivered a course of six lectures at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, which were afterwards published, On the Poetical Literature of the