306 ROBERTSON. 



evidence supposed to be printed in Murdin's ' State 

 Papers' since the ' History of Scotland' was composed, 

 and also carefully examined again all his authorities 

 on the points on which he had been assailed by the 

 Jacobite forces, yet, with the exception of a few unim- 

 portant errors or oversights, which he corrected, he 

 adhered to his original statements, well weighed and 

 maturely framed as they had, in all instances, been. 



The personal resentment of an able but unprincipled 

 man was the cause of the most unworthy and un- 

 measured attacks, both on his ' Scottish History' and 

 on his subsequent publications. Gilbert Stuart was a 

 person of undoubted parts, but of idle and dissipated 

 habits. An able and learned work which he had 

 published at a very early age, on the ' History of the 

 British Constitution/ made the University of Edin- 

 burgh give him the degree of Doctor of Laws, when 

 little more than one and twenty ; and he soon after 

 published his ' View of Society in Europe,' being an 

 historical inquiry concerning laws, manners, and go- 

 vernment. 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 in- 

 fluence 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 person from the professor's 

 chair would have been a duty incumbent upon the 

 head of any university in Christendom, whatever, in 

 other respects, might be his merits ; but no admission 



