court of session. Robertson was one of the original fifteen members, and he was perhaps the most prominent speaker in a coterie which included Adam Smith, David Hume, Alexander Wedderburn, Adam Ferguson, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Lords Elibank, Monboddo, Kames, and Woodhouselee. A critical organ, the [old] ‘Edinburgh Review,’ started by this society in 1755, was conducted with a causticity which proved fatal to its existence. In another fashion, during the following year (1756–7), Robertson showed himself a champion of liberalism. He supported his friend John Home [q. v.] when the general assembly condemned Home for having written and produced a stage-play. Home had already supported Robertson in advocating the rights of the lay patrons. Although unable to protect Home from censure, Robertson led a minority of eleven (against two hundred) which sought to mitigate the wrath of the assembly against the ministers who witnessed Home's play. But while too rational to condemn the stage, Robertson had scruples about visiting a theatre himself—an apparent inconsistency which he justified by a promise made to his dead father.
In 1755 Robertson published ‘The Situation of the World at the Time of Christ's Appearance, and its Connection with the Success of His Religion considered,’ a sermon preached before the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge on 6 Jan. (Edinburgh, 1755, 8vo; 6th edit. 1791). This sermon, which is well written and sensible, is the only one he published. It was translated into German. When at Edinburgh in 1773 Dr. Johnson was pressed to hear Robertson as the most eloquent of Scottish preachers, but declined to give a sanction by his ‘presence to a presbyterian assembly.’
In August 1756 Robertson was called from Gladsmuir to Lady Yester's chapel in Edinburgh, but was not admitted until 15 June 1758. During this interval, in the spring of 1758, Robertson visited London, his primary object being to make arrangements for the publication of his newly completed ‘History of Scotland.’ The incidents of the journey are humorously related by Alexander Carlyle. In town Robertson and his party associated mostly with Dr. Pitcairne, John Home, and Sir David Kinloch. He met his countryman Smollett, then at the height of his fame, at Forrest's coffee-house, and expressed a naïve surprise at the urbanity of the creator of ‘Roderick Random’ and ‘Peregrine Pickle.’ ‘This was not the first instance we had,’ explains Carlyle, ‘of the rawness in respect of the world that still blunted our sagacious friend's observations.’ Early in May the historian went with Home, the Wedderburns, and others to play golf at Garrick's house at Hampton. Robertson also met Duncan Forbes, John Blair, Lord Bute, Sir Robert Keith, and Horace Walpole; and he returned on horseback by way of Oxford, Warwick, Birmingham, the Leasowes, Burton-on-Trent (‘where we could get no drinkable ale’), Sheffield, Leeds, and Newcastle, crossing the border on 20 May.
Shortly after his return, Robertson was created D.D. by the university of Edinburgh, and on 1 Feb. 1759 appeared his ‘History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI till his Accession to the Crown of England. With a Review of the Scotch History previous to that Period, and an Appendix containing Original Papers’ (London, 2 vols. 4to; 2nd edit. 1760; 5th edit. 1762; 11th edit. corrected 1787, 2 vols. 8vo). The first edition was exhausted in less than a month. The reading public of England was startled, if not annoyed, by its merits. ‘How could I suspect,’ Horace Walpole wrote to Robertson, ‘that a man under forty, whose dialect I scarce understood, and who came to me with all the diffidence and modesty of a very middling author, and who, I was told, had passed his life in a small living near Edinburgh—how could I suspect that he had not only written what all the world now allows to be the best modern history, but that he had written it in the purest English and with as much seeming knowledge of men and courts as if he had passed all his life in important embassies?’ Burke and Gibbon, Warburton and Baron D'Holbach, also sent the author letters of approbation. Lord Chesterfield declared that the work was equal in eloquence and beauty to that of Livy. David Mallet testified that Lord Mansfield was at a loss whether to esteem more the matter or the style, while ‘Lord Lyttelton seemed to think that since the time of St. Paul there scarce had been a better writer than Dr. Robertson.’ David Hume wrote with ironical good humour, ‘A plague take you! Here I sat on the historical summit of Parnassus, immediately under Dr. Smollett, and you have the impudence to squeeze yourself past me and place yourself directly under his feet.’ Hume criticised some peculiarities of Robertson's vocabulary. But, after all deductions, the purity of Robertson's English cannot be seriously impugned. He modelled his style upon Swift, after exhaustively studying that of Livy and Tacitus. By way of practice
