arch did not perhaps lead him to expend great sums in patronizing the arts of the lighter branches of literature, but he certainly was qualified to appreciate, and also disposed to encourage, any exertion on the part of his subjects which had a direct utility, and was consistent with honour and virtue. The magnum opus of Bruce was bought up by the public at its very first appearance: it required the whole of the impression to satisfy the first burst of public curiosity. It was, in the same year, translated into German and French.
Bruce, in his latter years, lost much of his capabilities of enjoying life by his prodigious corpulence. We have been told that at this period of his life he was enlarged to such a degree as almost to appear monstrous. His appearance was rendered the more striking, when, as was his frequent custom, he assumed an Eastern habit and turban. His death was at length caused indirectly by his corpulence. On the evening of the 27th of April, 1794, after he had entertained a large party at dinner, he was hurrying to escort an old lady down stairs to her carriage, when his foot that foot which had carried him through so many dangers, slipped upon the steps; he tumbled down the stair, pitched upon his head, and was taken up speechless, with several of his fingers broken. Notwithstanding every effort to restore the machinery of existence, he expired that night. He was buried in the churchyard of his native parish of Larbert, where a monument indicates his last resting-place. To quote the character which has been written for him by Captain Head, "Bruce belonged to that useful class of men who are ever ready 'to set their life upon a cast, and stand the hazard of the die.' He was merely a traveller—a knight-errant in search of new regions of the world; yet the steady courage with which he encountered danger—his patience and fortitude in adversity his good sense in prosperity the tact and judgment with which he steered his lonely course through some of the most barren and barbarous countries in the world, bending even the ignorance, passions, and prejudices of the people he visited to his own advantage the graphic truth with which he described the strange scenes which he had witnessed, and the inflexible fortitude with which he maintained his assertions against the barbarous incredulity of his age, place him at the top of his own class, while he at least stands second to no man." Bruce understood French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese the two former he could write and speak with facility. Besides Greek and Latin, which he read well, but not critically, he knew the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac; and in the latter part of his life, compared several portions of the Scripture in those related dialects. He read and spoke with ease, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic, which had proved of the greatest service to him in his travels. It is said that the faults of his character were—inordinate family pride, and a want of that power to accommodate one's self to the weaknesses—of others, which is so important a qualification in a man of the world. But amidst the splendours of such a history, and such an intellect, a few trivial weaknesses even allowing those to be so are as motes in the meridian sun. A second edition of Bruce's Travels was published in 1805, by Dr Alexander Murray, from a copy which the traveller himself had prepared to put to press. The first volume of this elegant edition contains a biographical account of the author, by Dr Murray, who was perhaps the only man of his age whom learning had fitted for so peculiar a task as that of revising Bruce's Travels.
BRUCE, Michael, with whose name is associated every regret that can be inspired by the early extinction of genius of a high order, still farther elevated by purity of life, was born at Kinnesswood, in the parish of Portmoak, Kinrossshire, on the 27th of March, 1746. His father, Alexander Bruce, a weaver, and his mother, whose name was also Bruce, were honest and pious Burghers; they had eight children, Michael being the fifth. Manifesting from his earliest
