vogue, this great composer has employed himself chiefly in symphonies, but in a style peculiar to himself. While others please and amuse, it is his province to rouse and almost overset his hearer. Loudness, rapidity, enthusiasm, announced the earl of Kellie. His harmonies are acknowledged to be accurate and ingenious, admirably calculated for the effect in view, and discovering a thorough knowledge of music, from some specimens, it appears that his talents were not confined to a single style, which has made his admirers regret that he did not apply himself to a greater variety of subjects. He is said to have composed only one song, but that an excellent one. What appears singularly peculiar in this musician, is what may be called the velocity of his talents, by which he composed whole pieces of the most excellent music in one night. Part of his works are still unpublished, and not a little is probably lost Being always remarkably fond of a concert of wind instruments, whenever he met with a good band of them, he was seized with a fit of composition, and wrote pieces in the moment, which he gave away to the performers, and never saw again; and these, in his own judgment, were the best he ever composed."[1]
Having much impaired his constitution by hard living, the earl of Kellie visited Spa, from which he was returning to England, when he was struck with a paralytic shock upon the road. Being advised to stop a few days at Brussels, he was attacked by a putrid fever, of which he died at that city, on the 9th of October, 1781, in the fifty-first year of his age.
ERSKINE, Thomas, lord Erskine, was the youngest son of David Henry, tenth earl of Buchan. He was born in the year 1750, and, after having passed through the high school classes at Edinburgh, was sent to the university of St Andrews to finish his education. At a very early age he had imbibed a strong predilection for a naval life; and the limited means of his family rendering an early adoption of some profession necessary, he was allowed to enter the service as a midshipman, under Sir John Lindsay, nephew to the celebrated earl of Mansfield. Young Erskine embarked at Leith, and did not put foot again on his native soil until a few years before his death. He never, it is believed, held the commission of lieutenant, although he acted for some time in that capacity by the special appointment of his captain, whose kindness in this instance ultimately led to his eleve's abandoning the service altogether, when required to resume the inferior station of a midshipman. After a service of four years, he quitted the navy, and entered the army as an ensign, in the royals, or first regiment of foot, in 1768. In 1770, he married an amiable and accomplished woman, and shortly afterwards went with his regiment to Minorca, where he spent three years. While in the army, he acquired great reputation for the versatility and acuteness of his conversational powers. Boswell, who met with the young officer in a mixed company in London, mentions the pleasure which Dr Johnson condescended to express on hearing him, an approbation which assures us that the young Scotsman's colloquial talents were of no ordinary kind, and possessed something more than mere brilliancy or fluency, even at that early period of life. It was the knowledge of these qualities of mind, probably, which induced his mother a lady whose uncommon acquirements we have already had occasion to eulogise in a memoir of another son to urge him to devote the great energies of his mind to the study of the law and jurisprudence of his country. Her advice, seconded by the counsel of a few judicious friends, was adopted ; and, in his 27th year, Thomas Erskine renounced the glittering profession of arms for the graver studies of law.
He entered as a fellow-commoner, at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the
- ↑ Robertson of Dalmeny's Inquiry into the Fine Arts, vol. i.
