EARLY LIFE. 49 



attacks, from 1768 to 1773; the editors of such jour- 

 nals, as is too usual with persons in their really re- 

 sponsible situation, but who think they can throw the 

 responsibility upon their unknown contributors, never 

 inquiring whether the criticisms which they published 

 proceeded from the honest judgment or the personal 

 spite of the writers. It is the imperative duty of 

 every one who conducts the periodical press, to use 

 his utmost diligence in preventing concealed enemies 

 or rivals from using his paper as the vehicle of their 

 attacks. He should lay down the rule never again 

 to receive any contribution from a person who had 

 deceived him by suppressing the fact that he had a 

 grudge or an interest against the object of his former 

 attack. 



Stuart returned to Edinburgh, and set up a maga- 

 zine and review, of which the scurrility, dictated by 

 private resentments, was so unremitting, that it brought 

 the work to a close in less than three years, when he 

 went back to London, and recommenced his anony- 

 mous vituperation of Scottish authors through the 

 periodical press. He also published in 1779, 1780, 

 and 1782, three works: one on the ' Constitutional 

 History of Scotland/ being an attack on Dr Eobert- 

 son's first book ; another on the ' History of the 

 Keformation in Scotland/ and the third on the * His- 

 tory of Queen Mary ' being also an elaborate attack 

 upon the Principal. The ability and the learning of 

 these works, and their lively and even engaging style, 

 have not saved them from the oblivion to which they 



VOL. i. D 



