WILLIAM, an eminent printer, was born at Edinburgh in the year 1715. After having passed through the tuition of a grammar-school, he served an apprenticeship to a printer, and when a very young man removed to a wider sphere in that line of business, and went to follow his trade in London. His abilities in his profession, accompanied with perfect integrity and unabating diligence, enabled him, after the first difficulties were overcome, to advance with rapid success. And he was one of the most flourishing men of the trade, when, in the year 1740, he purchased a share of the patent for king's printer, of Eyre, with whom he maintained the most cordial intimacy during the rest of his life. Never had such rewards been given to the labours of literary men as were received from him and his associates in their purchases of copyrights. Having now attained the first great object of business, wealth, Strahan looked with a very allowable ambition on the stations of political rank and eminence. Politics had long occupied his active mind, and he had for many years pursued them as his favourite amusement, by corresponding on that subject with some of the first men of the age.

Strahan's queries to Dr Franklin in the year 1769, respecting the discontent of the Americans, published in the London Chronicle of 28th July 1778, show the just conception which he entertained of the important consequences of that dispute, and his anxiety to investigate, at that early period, the proper means by which their grievances might be removed, and a permanent harmony restored between the two countries. In the year 1775 he was elected a member of parliament for the burgh of Malmesbury, in Wiltshire, with a very illustrious colleague, Mr Fox; and in the succeeding parliament, for Wootton Bassett, in the same county. In this station, applying himself with that industry which was natural to him, he was a useful member, and attended the house with a scrupulous punctuality. When parliament was dissolved in 1784, Strahan was not again returned for the borough he had previously represented, and his declining health induced him to retire from political life. He died on the 9th of July 1785, in the seventy-first year of his age.