brave only increased the glory of their conquerors. Hailes, when sending the portion of the ‘Annals’ in which Robert Bruce appears, asked Johnson to draw from it a character of Bruce. The doctor replied that it was not necessary, yet there were few things he would not do to oblige Hailes. The ‘Annals’ of Hailes, written with the accuracy of a judge, which far exceeds the accuracy of the historian, has been the text-book of all subsequent writers on the period of Scottish history it covers. The earlier Celtic sources had not in his time been explored, except by Father Innes, and were imperfectly understood. Nor could he have carried on his work much further without encountering political and religious controversies. He was thus enabled to maintain throughout his whole work a conspicuous impartiality.
Only a few of his minor works call for special remark. ‘The Canons of the Church of Scotland,’ drawn up in the provincial councils held at Perth A.D. 1242 and 1269, which were contributed to the ‘Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ’ of Wilkins, but published separately in 1769, with a continuation subsequently issued containing the later canons, showed his consciousness of the fact that Scottish history in the middle ages cannot be understood without reference to its ecclesiastical annals. So little attention did the first of these publications attract that Hailes mentions, for the benefit of those who may be inclined to publish any tracts concerning the antiquities of Scotland, that only twenty-five copies were sold.
His ‘Examination of some of the Arguments for the High Antiquity of Regiam Majestatem, and an Inquiry into the Authority of the Leges Malcolmi,’ published in the same year, was a proof of his freedom from patriotic prejudice, and an early instance of sound historical criticism. He demonstrated in this short tract the fact that much of the early law of Scotland was borrowed from English sources, as the ‘Regiam Majestatem’ from the treatise of Glanville, and that the foundation of the feudal law of Scotland must be sought, not in the age of Malcolm Mackenneth or Malcolm Canmore, but in the reign of David I. These are cardinal points in the true history of Scotland.
His reply to Gibbon, although it touches only a single point in the work of the greatest English historian, would now be admitted by candid students to be successful. Gibbon almost confessed judgment against himself by abstaining from any rejoinder except the sarcasm that as Lord Hailes ‘was determined to make some flaws in his work, he dared to say that he had found some.’
Lord Hailes was twice married: first, to Anne Brown, daughter of Lord Coalston, a Scotch judge, on whose death, after giving birth to twins, he wrote a pathetic epitaph in Latin, published in the ‘Life of Kames,’ by Lord Woodhouselee; secondly, to Helen, daughter of another judge, Sir James Fergusson, Lord Kilkerran. He was survived by two daughters, one born of each marriage. The younger daughter, Jean, married her first cousin, afterwards Sir James Fergusson, bart., whose grandson, Mr. Charles Dalrymple, M.P., having assumed the name of Dalrymple, now possesses the estate of his great-grandfather, Lord Hailes. His title passed to his nephew, the son of his brother, John Dalrymple, provost of Edinburgh. Another of his brothers was Alexander Dalrymple, the well-known hydrographer and voluminous geographical writer. He died of apoplexy, the result of sedentary habits, on 29 Nov. 1792. Carlyle, the minister of Inveresk, who knew him well, summed up his character in a funeral sermon. The admirable portrait by Kay, the Edinburgh caricaturist, represents Hailes as short and stout, with a thick, short neck, common in persons of apoplectic tendency, and eyes of intelligence and quiet humour, set in a face whose placidity recalls that of his ancestor, Stair. It is more easy to account for this equanimity of temper in Hailes, whose life had been uniformly prosperous, than in Stair, whose career was an example of the vicissitudes of fortune.
His works are: 1. ‘Sacred Poems, Translations, and Paraphrases from the Holy Scriptures,’ by various authors, Edinburgh, 1751. 2. ‘Proposals for carrying on a certain Public Work in the City of Edinburgh,’ a parody of a pamphlet by Lord Minto relative to proposed buildings for the new town of Edinburgh, 1753 or 1754. 3. ‘Select Discourses, by John Smith, late fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge,’ 1756. 4. ‘A Discourse of the Unnatural and Vile Conspiracy attempted by John, earl of Gowry.’ 5. ‘A Sermon, which might have been preached in East Lothian, upon the 25th day of October 1761, on Acts xxviii. 1, 2, ‘The barbarous people showed us no little kindness.’ Occasioned by the country people pillaging the wreck of two vessels, viz. the Betsy Cunningham and the Leith packet Pitcairn, from London to Leith, cast away on the shore between Dunbar and North Berwick. 6. ‘Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain in the reign of James I, published from the originals,’ 1762. 7. ‘The Works of the ever memorable Mr. John Hales of Eaton, now first collected together in 3 vols.,’ 1765. 8. ‘A Specimen of a Book entitled Ane Compendious Booke of
