as a striking likeness. It was engraved by H. Meyer for Lord Brougham's ‘Lives,’ and also by T. Holloway and W. Walker. Another portrait, in wig and gown, by Sir Henry Raeburn, is preserved at the university of Edinburgh (Guelph Exhib. Cat. No. 201). There are other engraved portraits by Heath and by Ridley (European Mag. February 1802). Two medallions by James Tassie are in the National Portrait Gallery of Edinburgh. One of these, a small bust in profile, executed in 1791, was engraved in stipple by C. Picart from a drawing by J. Jackson.
Collective editions of Robertson's works were issued in 1800–2, London, 11 vols. 8vo; 1802, 12 vols. 8vo; 1806, 12 vols. 8vo; 1809, 12 vols. 8vo; 1812; 1813, Edinburgh, 6 vols. 8vo; 1817, London, 12 vols. 8vo; 1819, Edinburgh; 1820, London; 1821, London, 10 vols. 8vo; 1822, 12 vols.; 1824, 9 vols. 8vo, 1825, Oxford, 8 vols. 8vo (the best edition); and later editions 1826, 1827, 1828, 1831, 1833, 1837, 1840, 1841, 1851, 1852, 1860, 1865. In French, besides the works translated by Suard, Morellet, and Camperon, 1817–21, 12 vols. (reproduced in one volume in ‘Panthéon Littéraire,’ 1836), there appeared, in 1837, ‘Œuvres complètes précédées d'une Notice par J. A. C. Buchet,’ Paris, 2 vols. imp. 8vo.
[There are three good biographical accounts of Robertson that are more or less authoritative: 1. Dugald Stewart's ‘Life’ (Edinburgh, 1801 and 1802) prefixed to most of the collective editions, and freely abridged for Rees's Encycl., the Encycl. Londinensis, Chalmers's Biogr. Dict., Chambers's Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen, Anderson's Scottish Nation, the Georgian Era, McClintock and Strong's Cyclopædia, and other compilations. 2. An Account of the Life and Writings, by George Gleig, bishop of Brechin (Edinburgh, 1812). 3. The Memoir in Lord Brougham's Lives of the Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the time of George III. Important supplementary information is to be found in Hew Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scot. vol. i. pts. i. and ii.; in Dr. Carlyle's Autobiography; in Grant's History of the University of Edinburgh; and in Allibone's Dictionary of English Literature (an article of special value). See also Cockburn's Memorials; Moncreiff's Life of Erskine; Cook's Life of Hill; Scots Mag. vol. xxviii.; Gent. Mag. 1836 ii. 19, 1846 i. 227, 1847 ii. 3, 4; Edinb. Rev. April 1803; Hume's Letters, ed. G. B. Hill; Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill; Walpole's Corresp. ed. Cunningham, and George III, ed. Barker, iii. 121; Eugène Lawrence's British Historians, 1855; Green's Diary of a Lover of Literature, 1810; Wesley's Journal, iii. 447; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 206, iii. 33, 137, 637, iv. 647, v. 252, vi. 441, viii. 245, 258, and Lit. Illus. iv. 823, vi. 116, 496, 604, 735; De Chastellux's Essays, 1790; Chateaubriand's Sketches of Engl. Lit. ii. 266; Suard's Notice sur la Vie et les Ecrits du Dr. Robertson; Alison's Essays, 1850, vol. iii.; Buckle's Hist. of Civilisation; Southey's Hist. of Brazil, i. 639; Prescott's Works; Schlegel's Lectures on Hist. of Lit.; Schlosser's Hist. of the Eighteenth Century; Disraeli's Miscellanies of Literature; English Prose Selections, ed. Craik, iv. 273; Kay's Edinburgh Portraits; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. ii. 135, 172, 253, iii. 40, 77, 2nd ser. vii. 168, 323.]
ROBERTSON, WILLIAM (1740–1799), deputy keeper of the records of Scotland, born in 1740 at Fordyce in Banffshire, was the son of James Robertson, a feuar in that town, by Isabella (Taylor). He was educated at Fordyce grammar school, where he formed a friendship with George Chalmers [q. v.], the author of ‘Caledonia.’ After spending two years at King's College, Aberdeen, he was in 1757 apprenticed to an advocate of Aberdeen; at the end of thirteen months his master, Mr. Turner, generously cancelled his articles, so that he might accompany James Burnett [q. v.], of Monboddo, on his visits to France in connection with the famous Douglas cause. In 1766 Burnett recommended him as secretary to James Ogilvy, sixth earl of Findlater and third earl of Seafield [q. v.] Two years later he published at Edinburgh ‘The History of Greece from the Earliest Times till it became a Roman Province,’ a digest adapted for educational purposes from the French of Alletz. In 1769 he issued a political jeu d'esprit, entitled ‘A North Briton Extraordinary, by a Young Scotsman in the Corsican Service,’ which was ‘designed to repel the illiberal invectives of Mr. Wilkes against the people of Scotland,’ and attracted sufficient notice to be attributed, in error, to Smollett. In the autumn of 1773 Lord Findlater's seat, Cullen House, was visited by Dr. Johnson, for whose benefit Robertson arranged a breakfast of boiled haddocks and a walk through the finely wooded park; but Johnson ordered the haddocks off the table in disgust, and declined to walk through the park, on the ground that he came to Scotland to see not meadows, but rocks and mountains. In 1777 Robertson received a commission from Lord Frederick Campbell, then lord clerk register of Scotland, to act as the colleague of his brother Alexander (1745–1818), who had been appointed deputy keeper of the records of Scotland in 1773. From the time of his appointment until 1790 Robertson was much employed in inquiring into the state of the Scottish peerage. The knowledge that he acquired of this complex subject was embodied in a quarto volume published in 1794,
