ERSKINE. 



89 



journals and other periodicals. They are executed 

 with accuracy, on a good plan, and with a general 

 account of reviews, whose character for partiality or 

 impartiality is illustrated by examples. At the 

 same time, Ersch began to prepare a Universal 

 Dictionary of Modern Authors, which he afterwards 

 limited to European writers. This was the origin of 

 his Gelehrtes Frankreich (Literary France,) Ham- 

 burg, 17971806, 3 vols., with two supplements. 

 In die year 1803, he was made professor of geogra- 

 phy and statistics in the university of Halle, where 

 he published his Manual of German Literature, from 

 the Middle of the eighteenth century till the latest 

 Times (Amsterdam and Leipsic, 1812, 2 vols. 8vo, 

 2d edition, Leipsic, 1822), and the Universal Ency- 

 clopaedia of Arts and Sciences (Leipsic, 1818, et seq. 

 4to). By the former work, he first gave a systema- 

 tic character to modern German bibliography ; and 

 its completeness, accuracy, and arrangement make 

 it a model for such a work. What knowledge, 

 what attention and industry, are requisite to conduct 

 a work like the Encyclopedia, as he has done it, 

 needs no explanation. He died in January, 1828. 



ERSKINE, EBENE7ER,the founder of the Secession 

 church in Scotland, was born on the 22d of June, 

 1680, and died in 1756. After going through a re- 

 gular course of study at the university of Edinburgh, 

 he was ordained minister of Portmoak in Fife, in 

 1702 ; in which situation he continued for twenty- 

 six years, when he removed to Stirling. Five 

 volumes of his sermons were printed in 1762 and 

 1765, 8vo. Regarding his participation in the origin 

 of the Secession church, the reader is referred to the 

 article Secession. His brother RALPH, the author of 

 Gospel Sonnets, was born in 1685, and died in 1752. 

 He was minister of Dunfermline, in Fifeshire, from 

 1711 to 1734, when he was ejected for secession. His 

 sermons are numerous, and together with his lyrical 

 effusions, called Gospel Sonnets, were printed in 1750, 

 in 2 vols. folio. The latter have been often reprinted. 



ERSKINE, The Hon. HENRY, a distinguished 

 Scottish barrister, was the third son of Henry David, 

 tenth earl of Buchan, by Agnes, daughter of Sir 

 James Stewart of Coltness and Goodtrees, Baronet, 

 and was born at Edinburgh, on the 1st of November, 

 1746, 0.S. His younger brother, Thomas lord Erskine, 

 rose to the dignity of lord high chancellor of Great 

 Britain, and he himself was long the brightest orna- 

 ment of the Scottish bar. 



Mr Erskine, after studying at the universities of 

 St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, adopted 

 the legal profession, and in 1768 was called to the 

 bar. There he was equalled, perhaps surpassed in 

 depth of legal knowledge, by one or two of his 

 fellows ; but none could boast of equal variety and 

 extent of accomplishments ; none surpassed him in 

 knowledge of human character ; and none equalled 

 him in quickness of perception, playfulness of fancy, 

 and professional tact. He was the Horace of the 

 profession ; and his " seria commixta jocis" are still 

 remembered with pleasure by his surviving contem- 

 poraries. Yet, while by the unanimous suffrages of 

 the public, Mr Erskine found himself placed without 

 a rival at the head of a commanding profession, his 

 general deportment was characterized by the most 

 unaffected modesty and easy affability, and his talents 

 were not less at the service of indigent but deserving 

 clients, than they were to be commanded by those 

 whose wealth or influence enabled them most liberally 

 to remunerate his exertions. Indeed his talents were 

 never more conspicuous than when they were employ- 

 ed in protecting innocence from oppression, in vindi- 

 cating the cause of the oppressed, or exposing the 

 injustice of the oppressor. He had early embraced 

 the principles of whiggism ; and on the accession of 



the Rockingham administration, his merits pointed 

 him out as the fittest member of faculty, for the 

 important office of lord advocate of Scotland, to which 

 he was immediately appointed. But his opportuni- 

 ties to support the new administration were few, on 

 account of its ephemeral existence ; and on his retire- 

 ment, he was immediately stripped of his official 

 dignity, and even some years afterwards deprived, by 

 the vote of his brethren, on account of his obnoxious 

 political sentiments, of the honourable office of dean 

 of faculty. On the return of the liberal party to office 

 in 1806, he once more became lord advocate, and 

 was returned member for the Dumfries district of 

 burghs, in the room of major general Dalrymple. 

 This, however, like the former whig administration, 

 was not suffered to continue long in power, and with 

 its dissolution, Mr Erskine again lost his office and 

 seat in parliament. Amid these disappointments, Mr 

 Erskine remained not less distinguished by inflexible 

 steadiness to his principles, than by invariable gentle- 

 ness and urbanity in his manner of asserting them. 



Mr Erskine's constitution began to give way under 

 the pressure of disease, about the year 1812 ; and 

 he, thereupon, retired from professional life, to his 

 beautiful villa of Ammondell in West Lothian. The 

 five remaining years of his life were consumed by a 

 complication of maladies ; and he expired at his 

 country-seat on October 8, 1817, when he had nearly 

 completed the 71st year of his age. It has been 

 said of men of wit in general, that they delight and 

 fascinate everywhere but at home ; this observation, 

 however, though too generally true, could not be 

 applied to him, for no man delighted more in the enjoy- 

 ment of home, or felt more truly happy in the bosom 

 of his family, while at the same time none were more 

 capable of entering into the gayeties of polished 

 society, or more courted for the brilliancy of his wit, 

 and the ease and polish of his manners. 



ERSKINE, THOMAS, lord Erskine, the younger 

 brother of the preceding, became still more distin- 

 guished as a lawyer and pleader. He was born 

 in the year 1750, and was educated partly at the 

 high school of Edinburgh, and partly at the uni- 

 versity of St Andrews. The contracted means of 

 his family rendering a profession necessary, he was 

 embarked at Leith as a midshipman, and, from this 

 time, did not revisit Scotland until a few years before 

 his death. He never obtained a commission in the 

 navy, which he quitted after a service of four years, 

 and entered into the royals, or first regiment of foot, 

 in 1768. In 1770, he married, and went, with his 

 regiment, to Minorca, where he spent three years. 

 He served in the army six years, and, during that 

 time, acquired considerable reputation for the acute- 

 ness and versatility of his talents in conversation ; 

 and it is supposed that this circumstance, and the 

 earnest persuasion of his mother, a lady of uncom- 

 mon acquirements and penetration, induced him, at 

 the age of twenty-six, to embrace the legal profes- 

 sion. He entered as a fellow commoner at Trinity 

 college, Cambridge, in 1777, merely to obtain a 

 degree, to which he was entitled as the son of a 

 nobleman, and thereby to shorten his passage to the 

 bar ; and he, at the same time, entered himself a 

 student of Lincoln's Inn. He also became a pupil 

 in the office of Mr afterwards judge Buller, then 

 an eminent special pleader, and subsequently in that 

 of Mr afterwards baron Wood. He was called to 

 the bar in 1778, and his success was immediate. 

 Accidentally introduced to captain Baillie, who had 

 been removed, by the earl of Sandwich, from the 

 superintendence of Greenwich hospital, he was 

 employed by that gentleman to oppose a motion of 

 the attorney-general, for leave to file an indictment 

 against him for a libel on the earl. He showed so 



