48 EARLY LIFE. 



malignant feeling under which they were composed, 

 and their being devoted to its gratification. That 

 these intemperate habits and irregular life would not 

 have produced this effect, there are unhappily too 

 many proofs in the history of authors. An able and 

 learned work on the ' History of the British Constitu- 

 tion/ made the University of Edinburgh give him the 

 degree of Doctor of Laws when little more than one- 

 and-twenty ; and he soon after published his ' Views 

 of Society in Europe/ being an historical inquiry con- 

 cerning laws, manners, and government. Immediately 

 after this he was a candidate for the Professorship of 

 Public Law, in the University, and he fancied that he 

 owed his rejection to the influence of the Principal. 

 Nothing could be more fitting than that such should be 

 the case ; for the life of Stuart was known to be that 

 of habitual dissipation, in the intervals only of which 

 he had paroxysms of study. To exclude such a per- 

 son from the professor's chair would have been a duty 

 incumbent on the head of any university in Christen- 

 dom, whatever, in other respects, might be his merits. 

 But no admission was ever made by the Principal's 

 friends that he had interfered, or, indeed, that the 

 opinions and inclinations of the magistrates, who are 

 the patrons, rendered any such interference necessary. 

 But the disappointed candidate had no doubt upon 

 the subject, and he set no bounds to his thirst of 

 revenge. He repaired to London, where he became a 

 writer in reviews, and made all the literary men of 

 Edinburgh the subjects of his envious and malignant 



