William, one of the most eminent of British historians, was born in the manse or parsonage of Borthwick, county of Edinburgh, on the 19th of September 1721. He was the eldest son of the Rev. William Robertson, minister of Borthwick, and of Eleanor, daughter of David Pitcairn, Esq. of Dreghorn. After nineteen years' ministry in the beautiful rural parish of Borthwick, Mr Robertson was appointed one of the ministers of Old Greyfriars church, Edinburgh, and, removing thither with his family, his son William was placed in the university at the early age of twelve. He had previously attended the popular grammar school of Dalkeith, then taught by Mr Leslie. At the university William Robertson was distinguished for diligent and methodical study. He laid down for himself a strict plan of reading, and inscribed on his earliest note-books the motto Vita sine litteris mors ("life without letters is death"),—a remarkable instance of literary ambition in a youth of fourteen. He was also a conspicuous member of a society of his fellow-colleagues, who met to cultivate elocution and extempore discussion. In his twentieth year Robertson was licensed to preach; and two years afterwards (1743) he was presented by the Earl of Hopetoun to the living of Gladsmuir, a country parish in Haddingtonshire. The presentation came at a fortuitous time; for the same year the historian's parents died, within a few days of each other, of fever, leaving six daughters and one son almost wholly without provision. William removed the family to his manse at Gladsmuir, and renounced all idea of forming any matrimonial connection until he had seen them respectably settled in the world. This result was happily accomplished ere he had completed his thirtieth year; and in 1751 he married his cousin, Miss Nesbit, daughter of one of the ministers of Edinburgh. If we consider that the living of Gladsmuir was not worth more than £100 per annum, the filial piety and generosity of Robertson in this critical period of his life must be held as constituting a moral claim on the regard and admiration of posterity, scarcely inferior to that of his literary renown. A similar principle of self-sacrifice and duty led him in the second year of his ministry at Gladsmuir to enrol himself in a body of volunteers formed to resist the Jacobite rising of 1745. He soon became known as an able preacher and debater in the church courts, his exertions being strenuously devoted to the maintenance of order and authority. "Having," as Lord Brougham remarks, "a very strong and clear opinion in favour of lay patronage, the great question which divided the Church of Scotland in that day, he assumed the lead of its advocates. At first they formed a small minority of the Assembly; but by degrees, reason, enforced by eloquence, had its course, and he gained ultimately a complete victory over his adversaries." In other words, the moderate party in the church obtained the ascendant, and this they maintained, though often assailed, for about ninety years. During the same time, however, dissent was gaining ground among the people; and at length the popular aversion to lay patronage led to the memorable disruption of 1843. The great merit of Robertson as an ecclesiastical leader was the regularity and order which he established in the church courts, en- Robertson forcing the exercise of the judicial power of the church, and investing the proceedings of the General Assembly with an interest and importance which they had never before possessed. He was a man of sagacity, penetration, and address,—active, intrepid, and eloquent,—“designed by nature, as well as formed by study, for a great practical statesman and orator.” These qualities were further displayed at the meetings of the “Select Society,” an association founded in 1754 by Allan Ramsay the painter and some of his friends, with the view of promoting philosophical inquiry, and the improvement of its members in public speaking. Adam Smith, David Hume, Wedderburn (Lord Loughborough), Lord Kames, John Home, Dr Carlyle, and other eminent and accomplished men were members of this society; and its friendly meetings, often terminating in small social supper parties, bound together the literati of Edinburgh, and gave a peculiar freedom and geniality to their intercourse. The evening meal—the Roman banquet—was long a favourite in Edinburgh. Men of study and men of business loved to relax over these familiar and inexpensive meetings; and the late Lord Cockburn has recorded that, “so far as he had seen social life, its brightest sunshine had been on the last repast of the day.” The modern late dinner in some degree occupies its place; but it is more costly, more cumbrous and formal, and infinitely less social and inspiring. Whatever the present generation may have gained in wisdom or in the minor morals of life, the art of conversation has certainly declined amongst us. Before Robertson had become one of the celebrities of the Scottish capital, he had engaged in historical researches, sitting in his quiet mansé at Gladsmuir. In October 1753, we find him writing to Lord Hailes for information and books relative to the history of Scotland, as he intended to employ some of the idle time of that winter in making diligent inquiry into the period between the death of King James V. and the death of Queen Mary. In 1755 he published his only printed sermon, a discourse preached before the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, and entitled *The Situation of the World at the time of Christ’s Appearance, and its connection with the Success of his Religion Considered*. The historical bias of the author is thus manifested, and the sermon is as carefully and finely written, and as well reasoned, as any of his subsequent great works. In 1757 Robertson took an active part in defending some of his clerical friends from the persecution raised against them by the high Calvinistic party of the church, on account of Home’s tragedy of *Douglas*. That a Presbyterian clergyman should write a play, was held to be a glaring scandal and outrage, and the offence was aggravated by the circumstance, that several of his brother ministers had been present at the representation of the tragedy in Edinburgh. Robertson was not of the number. He had early promised to his father that he would never enter a play-house; and though he rejoiced in the success of his friend’s drama, and was delighted with private exhibitions of the genius of Garrick and Henderson, he faithfully kept his promise. Home bent before the clerical storm, by resigning his living at Athelstaneford, and most of the other clergymen having apologised and explained, were sentenced by their various presbyteries to short periods of suspension, or were only subjected to a rebuke. The pleas of alleviation put in by some of the offending ministers are amusingly characteristic. Mr White of Libberton owned the charge, but pleaded that he had gone to the play-house only once, and *endeavoured to conceal himself in a corner to avoid giving offence*. The presbytery suspended him from the 12th of January to the 2d of February. Mr Steel, minister of Stair, urged in extenuation that the play-house was at a great distance from his parish, and he had no reason to apprehend that he would be known! Not one of the ministers dared to justify his conduct in attending the theatre, and all were much indebted to Robertson for the Robertson judgment and eloquence with which he conducted their defence. The incident is both an interesting and important one in the history of the Scottish Church; and it served to bring more prominently into notice the talents and principles of the rising minister of Gladsmuir. He was honoured with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the university of Edinburgh; and in 1758 was appointed incumbent of Lady Yester’s parish in Edinburgh. By this time he had brought his Scottish historical labours to a close, and he repaired to London to make arrangements for the publication of his work. Parts of it, while passing through the press, were shown to influential friends and patrons,—to the Duke of Argyll, Lord Royston, Horace Walpole, and others. The work was thus made the topic of conversation, and the author was enabled to obtain a satisfactory settlement with his publisher, Andrew Millar, who gave L600 for the copyright. In February 1759 appeared this first great work of Robertson in two quarto volumes, bearing the title of *The History of Scotland during the reigns of Queen Mary and James VI., till his accession to the Crown of England*. The most sanguine anticipations of the author and his friends were realized. Congratulations poured in upon the historian from all quarters. The London authors, he says, were astonished. Mr Doddington, Horace Walpole, Lady Hervey, and the Speaker of the House of Commons (the pompous Onslow), became his sworn friends. Lord Bute thought the work the first history in the English tongue. Lord Chesterfield compared Robertson to Livy. “Lord Lyttelton,” says David Hume, “seems to think that since the time of St Paul there scarce has been a better writer than Dr Robertson.” That want of idiomatic English which is now charged upon the historian was not discovered by the best masters of English of that day. Hume himself, though his own history had been far from successful, and though he was fully conscious of the powers and more popular qualities of his new rival, cordially recommended the work, and exerted himself to procure a good translation of it into French. All parties, political and literary, joined in the loud applause, and church preferment soon followed. Two months after the publication of the history, the office of chaplain of the garrison at Stirling fell vacant, and the historian received the appointment. In 1761 he was made one of the deans of the chapel-royal. In March 1762, on the death of Dr Gowdie, he was chosen principal of the university of Edinburgh and minister of the Old Greyfriars; and in 1764 the sinecure office of historiographer for Scotland was revived in his favour, with a salary of L200 per annum. The influence and nationality of Lord Bute are no doubt visible in these appointments, but they were all ratified by public opinion. The *History of Scotland*, both for what it did and what it promised, was well worthy of honour and reward. As a narrative, clear, luminous, and picturesque, of a most interesting and complicated portion of history, it has perhaps never been excelled. The style is too uniformly stately and measured, and a few Scotticisms may be detected; but in the delineation of character and the arrangement of incidents,—in moral reflection, acute remark, and sustained dignity of thought, and chaste embellishment, the work must ever rank in the first class of historical compositions, and will ever enchain the attention of the reader. The story of Mary, Queen of Scots, is told with imitable grace and pathos; and although the views of Robertson have been assailed by eager and determined controversialists, no substantial deviation from the truth of history has been discovered in his work. The investigation of state papers, and the collection of Mary’s letters and despatches by Prince Labanoff, have since added to our stock of information; yet they have made no material alteration in the facts or deductions given by the Scottish Robertson, historian. Hume differs from Robertson in believing that Mary was accessory to the Babington conspiracy, including the intended assassination of Elizabeth; yet even this point is still only a matter of opinion or conjecture. The copy of the letter of Mary, on which the accusation is founded, is generally believed to have been altered from the original, and passages in it to have been interpolated by command of Walsingham, and no new evidence has been adduced. The same remark applies to the case of Mary and Darnley. What was obscure in the last century is obscure still. Ten years elapsed ere Robertson again appeared as an author. It had been suggested to him by the king, through the medium of Lord Bute, that he should undertake a History of England; and in the event of his compliance, every source of information which the government could command would be thrown open to him, with the addition of such a pecuniary provision as would enable him to bestow undivided attention on the work. The historian seems to have at first entertained the project, although declining to sever his connection with the Church of Scotland; but the retirement of Lord Bute and other causes led to the abandonment of the scheme. It is as well for Robertson's fame that he did not come into direct competition with his friend Hume, whose History was completed in 1761. In the most defective portion of Hume's history—the early period—Robertson would have been found equally deficient, in consequence of his ignorance of the northern languages; and though his diligence would have enabled him to avoid some of the palpable errors into which Hume fell, he would probably have entertained similar prejudices as to the Puritans and the Commonwealth, while he could hardly have hoped to excel his contemporary in philosophical analysis or grace of style. He more prudently selected a field still unoccupied; and in 1769 appeared, in three quarto volumes, *The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V., with a View of the Progress of Society from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.* For the copyright of the work the historian received L3600. "The character of Charles," as Dugald Stewart has observed, "was singularly adapted to Dr Robertson's purpose, not only as the ascendant it secured to him in the political world, marks him out indisputably as the principal figure in that illustrious group which then appeared on the theatre of Europe, but as it everywhere displays that deep and sagacious policy, which, by systematizing his counsels and linking together the great events of his reign, inspires a constant interest, if not for the personal fortunes of the man, at least for the magnificent projects of the politician. Nor is the character of Charles, however unamiable, without a certain species of attraction. The reader who is previously acquainted with the last scenes of his enterprising and brilliant life, while he follows him through the splendid career of his ambition, can scarcely avoid to indulge occasionally those moral sympathies which the contrast awakens, and to borrow from the solitude of the cloister some prophetic touches, to soften the sternness of the warrior and statesman." It may be remarked, however, that the cloister life of Charles, as related by the historian, has been drawn from authorities of little value, and various errors have been pointed out in a recent work expressly devoted to this subject. In the days of Robertson, minute research and collation of facts were held more subordinate than they are at present to the art of composition, and especially to the production of an interesting and glowing narrative; and the historian's account of Charles fully answered the public expectation, high as that had been raised by his previous History. The first volume of the work contains a view of the progress of society, and is an admirable philosophical dissertation on that important period of the world's history, when, as the author himself observes, "the several powers of Europe were formed into one great political system, in which each took a station, wherein it has since remained with less alteration than could have been expected, after the shocks occasioned by so many internal revolutions and so many foreign wars."

After an interval of eight years, Dr Robertson published, in 1777, his *History of America,* in two volumes quarto. His popularity was still undiminished, and his publisher was glad to secure the work by a payment of L2400 for the copyright, being in the same proportion as the sum given for the *History of Charles V.* The narrative portion of the *America* contains perhaps the finest passages in all Robertson's works. He has nowhere else shown the same power of picturesque and striking description. His imagination was excited by the great event of Columbus's voyage, the simple majestic character of the adventurous discoverer, and the landing and meeting with the natives, who regarded their new guests "as a superior order of beings, children of the sun, who had descended to visit the earth." The elements of the highest order of poetry are comprised in the incidents and general character of this great discovery of the New World; and Robertson has produced a series of grand historical paintings to which only the writings of Macaulay can furnish a parallel. One blemish in Robertson's work has been justly censured by his biographer, Dugald Stewart, though it is unfelt by the reader while carried along by the deep interest of the narrative. We refer to the disposition which the historian has shown to palliate or to veil the enormities of the Spaniards in their American conquests. The acquisition of the New World, it is calculated, was effected by the murder of 10,000,000 of the human species; and the accounts of this enormous carnage are authenticated beyond the possibility of dispute. "Millions died that Caesar might be great," says the poet;

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1 In one small point, a personal feature of Mary—and the Queen's person is a circumstance not to be disregarded, as Robertson has said, in the history of a female reign—a correction may be noted. The historian states that Mary's hair was black; in reality it was auburn, inclining to a dark red. The portraits of Mary of Guise have often been mistaken and engraved for those of her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots.

2 The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, by William Stirling, London, 1852. Mr Stirling has derived his materials from the History of the Order of St Jerome, by Joseph de Siguensa, who was born in 1545—a work of which Robertson does not seem to have heard,—and from MSS. in the archives of the French Foreign Office. Mr Stirling's volume is a curious and valuable contribution to history.

3 Lord Brougham—the grandson of Dr Robertson's sister—has instituted a parallel, or rather contrast, between parts of Robertson's History and parts of Mr Washington Irving's work, *The Life and Voyages of Columbus.* In chaste simplicity of style, combined with dramatic effect, the superiority undoubtedly rests with the Scottish historian. We give one of Lord Brougham's passages of comparison—"About two hours before midnight, Columbus, standing on the forecastle, observed a light at a distance, and presently pointed it out to Pedro," &c. Thus Robertson. Irving says—"Wrapped from observation in the shades of night, he maintained an intense and unremitting watch, ranging his eye along the dusky horizon. Suddenly about ten o'clock he thought he beheld a light glimmering at a distance." Lord Brougham (who remarks that Robertson had never thought of saying "suddenly," as knowing that light must of necessity be sudden), triumphantly asks, "Can any one doubt which of the two passages is the most striking—the chaste and severe, or the ornamented and gaudy and meretricious?" The account of Robertson makes the ships lie-to all night. Irving either makes them lie-to, and afterwards go on sailing rapidly, or the lying-to was the night before, and they sailed quicker the nearer they came to land, and in the dusk. The one makes them only see the shore after dawn; the other makes them see it two leagues off, in a dark night, at two in the morning, within the tropics." (Brougham's *Lives of Men of Letters,* London, 1845, page 296.) This minute verbal criticism is worthy of Johnson. Lord Brougham's own writings would ill stand such a test. Robertson, and every conqueror from Nimrod to Napoleon has been equally careless of the death, desolation, and misery occasioned by wars of ambition. Robertson should have branded the inhuman excesses of the Spaniards with his eloquent indignation. In his own nature and sentiments he was humane and enlightened; but he appears, like others, to have been captivated and blinded by the romance of his theme, and by the grand poetical enterprise of discovering and securing a new hemisphere. Shortly after the publication of his American history Robertson evinced his sense of justice and his principles of enlightened toleration by supporting the repeal of part of the penal laws against the Roman Catholics, which had been abolished in England, but were still in force in Scotland. The statute conferred no political rights on the Roman Catholics; from these they were debarred until half a century more had elapsed. The Papist, as Robertson said, "had not acquired the privileges of a citizen; he was only restored to the rights of a man." He was rendered capable of inheriting property by succession or conveyance, of transmitting it to others, or of acquiring it by purchase; and the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics who should take upon them the instruction of youth were freed from the dreadful penalty of perpetual imprisonment. This mild relaxation of the persecuting laws was resisted by a large body of the clergy and people of Scotland. Riots took place in Glasgow and Edinburgh; in the latter a house supposed to contain a Popish chapel was burned to the ground, and another house occupied by a Roman Catholic clergyman was destroyed. At night an attack upon the residence of Dr Robertson was meditated, but by that time some troops of dragoons had arrived, and a military party was posted in the college court, which prevented further violence. This disgraceful outbreak of fanaticism (which cost the city of Edinburgh a sum of L1650 by way of indemnification) probably hastened the intention of Robertson to retire from public life. He was now verging on his sixtieth year, and incessant study, as well as public business, had impaired the vigour of his robust constitution. His literary labours, however, were not terminated until the year 1791, when he published An Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India. The perusal of Major Rennell's Memoir for illustrating his map of Hindustan suggested this inquiry, which is marked by the author's wonted diligence in collecting and arranging materials, and by his skill in perspicuous narrative and illustration. The old age of the historian was cheerful and happy. There had been no death in his family. One son had adopted the legal profession (he afterwards rose to be a judge of the Court of Session), and two other sons had entered and distinguished themselves in the army. His eldest daughter was married to Mr Brydone, author of the well-known Tour through Sicily and Malta; and at Mr Brydone's residence of Lennel, on the southern border, the historian, we are told, delighted to pass a few weeks of summer or autumn. Latterly he resided at Grange House, near Edinburgh; and Lord Cockburn, in his Memorials of his Time, has given a graphic account of the "Principal," as he was usually styled from his office in the university:

"Many a happy summer day had his grandson John Russell and I in that house (the Grange). The doctor used to assist us in devising schemes to prevent the escape of our rabbits; and sometimes, but this was rarely, and with strict injunctions to us to observe that moderation which Mrs Robertson could never make himself practise, he permitted us to have a pull at his favourite cherry-tree. He was a pleasant-looking old man, within eye of great vivacity and intelligence, a large projecting chin, a small hearing-trumpet fastened by a black ribbon to a button-hole of his coat, and a rather large wig, powdered and curled. He struck us boys, even from the side-table, as being evidently fond of a good dinner; at which he sat with his chin upon his plate, intent upon the real business of the occasion. This appearance, however, must have been produced partly by his deafness; because when his eye told him that there was something interesting, it was delightful to observe the animation with which he instantly applied his trumpet; when, having caught the scent, he followed it up, and was leader of the pack."

This familiar sketch, like a Dutch painting, brings the domestic scene and its leading figure distinctly before us. Lord Brougham gives a few additional touches. The historian always wore his cocked hat even in the country; he had a stately gait, a slight guttural accent in his speech, which gave it a peculiar fulness; and he retained some old-fashioned modes of address, as using the word "Madam" at full length; and when he drank wine with any woman, adding "My humble service to you." Johnson thought Robertson a poor talker; but the sage of Bolt Court had exaggerated ideas as to the standard of good conversation, which with him was a species of intellectual gladiatorialship. By all his familiar friends the historian was esteemed as an agreeable and instructive companion, and Dugald Stewart mentions the "splendid variety of his conversation." Until within a few months of his decease Dr Robertson continued to preach; and his sermons, delivered with the aid only of a few notes, are described as having been at once simple, correct, and impressive. He was no deep evangelical divine; and doubts have even been hazarded as to his orthodoxy, to which his long and intimate friendship with David Hume may have first given rise. That friendship, he said, he always considered as one of the most fortunate and honourable circumstances of his life. "It is a felicity of the age and country in which we live, that men of letters can enter the same walk of science, and go on successfully, without feeling one sentiment of envy or rivalry. In the intercourse between Mr Hume and me (he writes to Gibbon), we always found something to blame as well as something to commend. I have received frequently very valuable criticisms on my performances from him; and I have sometimes ventured to offer him my strictures on his works. Permit me to hope for the same indulgence from you."

The style of Robertson's letters to Gibbon is more open to censure than any uncharitable inference which can be drawn from his intimacy with Hume. His position in the church and in the university demanded that he should at least have remonstrated against the two memorable and insidious chapters in the Decline and Fall on the subject of Christianity. But his language to Gibbon is uniformly complimentary; and instead of joining with Lord Hailes and Bishop Watson in denouncing the tone and spirit of the English historian, he speaks of the bigotry and fierce Christianity of parties who opposed him. The explanation is, that Robertson was a man of the world as well as a man of letters. In the former character he was apt to be overcomplaisant, and in the latter he regarded literary success as the great business and absorbing pursuit of life. The historian at times overpowered the divine. He was also reserved and reticent—an admirer of the school of Stoics. His deepest feelings lay hid from common observation. He would not, like Swift, have read prayers before his stranger guests had risen from their beds, but he would have importuned none of them to be present. There is not, however, a shadow of evidence to prove that Robertson ever disbelieved the faith of his fathers. His pastoral duties were discharged with exemplary care and regularity; and he preserved through life the confidence and regard of several of his brother divines, the most eminent for piety and strictness of Presbyterian doctrine and discipline. The health of Dr Robertson began to fail in the end of the year 1791, when symptoms of jaundice appeared, and a long and lingering illness succeeded. "While he was able to walk Roberval abroad," says Dugald Stewart, "he commonly passed a part of the day in a small garden, enjoying the simple gratifications it afforded with all his wonted relish. Some who now hear me will long remember, among the trivial yet interesting incidents which marked these last weeks of his memorable life, his daily visits to the fruit-trees (which were then in blossom), and the smile with which he, more than once, contrasted the interest he took in their progress with the event which was to happen before their maturity." He died on the 11th of June 1793, in the seventy-second year of his age. His funeral sermon was preached by his colleague in the church, Dr Erskine, who, though opposed to Robertson in his views of ecclesiastical government and policy, bore ample testimony to the talents and virtues of his friend, and who has left this record of his moral qualities:—"He enjoyed the bounties of Providence without running into riot; was temperate without austerity; condescending and affable without meanness; and in expense neither sordid nor prodigal. He could feel an injury, and yet bridle his passions; was grave, not sullen; steady, not obstinate; friendly, not officious; prudent and cautious, not timid."