304 ROBERTSON. 



is the almost unavoidable consequence of provincial 

 education and habits. Many forms of speech which 

 are English, are almost entirely unknown in the 

 remote parts of the kingdom ; many which are per- 

 fectly pure and classical, a person living in Scotland 

 would fear to use as doubting their correctness. That 

 Robertson, however, had carefully studied the best 

 writers, with a view to acquire genuine Anglicism, 

 cannot be doubted. He was intimately acquainted 

 with Swift's writings ; indeed, he regarded him as 

 eminently skilled in the narrative art. He had the 

 same familiarity with Defoe, and had formed the same 

 high estimate of his historical powers. I know, that 

 when a Professor in another University consulted him 

 on the best discipline for acquiring a good narrative 

 style, previous to drawing up John Bell of Antermony's 

 'Travels across Russia to Tartary and the Chinese 

 Wall,' the remarkable advice he gave him was to read 

 ' Robinson Crusoe' carefully ; and when the Professor 

 was astonished, and supposed it was a jest, the his- 

 torian said he was quite serious : but if ' Robinson 

 Crusoe' would not help him, or he was above studying 

 Defoe, then he recommended ' Gulliver's Travels.' 



The works of Dr. Robertson involved him, as was 

 to be expected, in some controversy of considerable 

 violence ; but as all men have done ample justice to his 

 diligence in consulting his authorities, and as all candid 

 men have testified to his strict impartiality, the attacks 

 which were made upon him, and to which he never 

 would offer any answer, proceeded from two unworthy 

 sources the bitter zeal of party, and the still more 

 bitter enmity of personal spleen. The Jacobites have 



