vi 



MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOE. 



withdrawn from the tm^moil and business of public life, 

 addicted himself to those literary objects, of which only 

 inconsiderable fragments remain, during those years of 

 elegant leisure which were alternately spent in his Italian 

 villas and magnificent palace at Rome. 



These remarks bear materially on the life of the subject 

 of this Memoir. Even were our materials more abundant, 

 our limits restrict us from doing more than touching 

 on the prominent occurrences in the life, and sahent 

 points of the character, of the author of the work to which 

 this biographical sketch is prefixed. What is properly 

 required in such a general sketch is, a portrait, as true in 

 its lineaments as may be, of the individual whose character 

 and habits it is proposed to describe. 



The Author of the following treatise was born at 

 Allanton, in the county of Lanark, 20th October 1759. 

 He was the second son''^' of James Steuart, tenth Baron 

 of Allanton, (according to the usual form of Scottish de- 

 signation,) and fourteenth in descent from the Lord High 

 Steward of Scotland, who was great-grandfather of King 

 Robert II., the first prince of the Stewart line. About 

 the close of the thirteenth century, in the reign of Alex- 

 ander III., Sir J ohn Stewart of Bonkle, or Bonkill, the 

 son of Alexander the sixth, the said Lord High Steward 

 of Scotland, bestowed the estate of Daldowie, on the river 

 Clyde, part of his extensive possessions in Lanarkshire 

 and Renfrewshire, in patrimony on his son Sir Robert, 

 and was himself slain at the fatal battle of Falkirk, (1298,) 



* Sir Heuiy had two brothers and a sister, two of whom predeceased, and the 

 youngest died a few years after, his father. Sir Henry seems to have inherited 

 a taste for retirement, and literaiy and country pursu.its, from his father, who, 

 as we learn fx^om Eobertson's edition of Crawford's ^/s^or?/ of Ren f rev: shire, "was 

 eminent both as an agriculturist and a scholar, and gi-eatly improved his estate 

 by enclosing and plantmg, which were begmning to become fashionable in his 

 time in Scotland." 



