have been given in some cases with success, but prolonged experience has proved that the use of it is apt to occasion sickness and loss of power. Crawford, when only forty-six years of age, retired on account of delicate health to a seat belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne at Lymington, Hampshire, and there he died in July 1795. A friend who knew him well wrote of him as ‘a man who possessed a heart replete with goodness and benevolence and a mind ardent in the pursuit of science. All who knew him must lament that aught should perturb his philosophical placidity and shorten a life devoted to usefulness and discovery.’
[Kirwan's Defence of the Doctrine of Phlogiston; Scheele's Experiments on Air and Fire; De Luc's Treatise on Meteorology; Dionysius Lardner's Treatise on Heat; Sir John Herschel's Natural Philosophy; The Georgian Era, iii. 494; Gent. Mag. vol. lxv.; Watt's Bibl. Brit.]
CRAWFORD, ANN (1734–1801), actress. [See Barry, Ann Spranger.]
CRAWFORD, DAVID (1665–1726), of Drumsoy, historiographer for Scotland, born in 1665, was the son of David Crawford of Drumsoy, and a daughter of James Crawford of Baidland, afterwards Ardmillan, a prominent supporter of the anti-covenanting persecution in Scotland. He was educated at the university of Glasgow and called to the bar, but having devoted himself to the study of history and antiquities was appointed historiographer for Scotland by Queen Anne. In 1706 he published ‘Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, containing a full and impartial account of the Revolution in that Kingdom begun in 1567. Faithfully published from an authentic manuscript.’ The manuscript was, he said, presented him by Sir James Baird of Saughton Hall, who purchased it from the widow of an episcopal clergyman. The ‘Memoirs’ were dedicated to the Earl of Glasgow, and the editor stated that his aim in publishing them was to furnish an antidote to what he regarded as the pernicious tendency of Buchanan's ‘History.’ For more than a century the work was, on the testimony of Crawford, received as the genuine composition of a contemporaneous writer, and implicitly relied upon by Hume, Robertson, and other historians, until Malcolm Laing in 1804 published ‘The Historie and Life of King James the Sext’ as contained in the Belhaven MS., the avowed prototype of Crawford's ‘Memoirs.’ Laing asserted the ‘Memoirs’ of Crawford to be an impudent forgery, and showed that the narrative had been garbled throughout, by the omission of every passage unfavourable to Mary, and the insertion of statements from Camden, Spottiswood, Melville, and others, these writers being at the same time quoted in the margin as collateral authorities. The Newbattle MS. of the same ‘Historie,’ in the possession of the Marquis of Lothian, was published by the Bannatyne Club in 1825. Crawford was the author of: 1. ‘Courtship-a-la-mode, a comedy,’ 1700. 2. ‘Ovidius Britannicus, or Love Epistles in imitation of Ovid,’ 1703. 3. ‘Love at First Sight, a comedy,’ 1704. He died in 1726, leaving an only daughter and heiress, Emilia, who died unmarried in 1731.
[Chalmers's Biog. Dict. x. 489–90; Chambers's Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen (Thomson), i. 395–396; Burke's Landed Gentry, ii. 385; Baker's Biog. Dram. (ed. 1812), i. 155; Laing's Preface to Historie of James Sext; Catalogue of Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.]
CRAWFORD, EDMUND THORNTON (1806–1885), landscape and marine painter, was born at Cowden, near Dalkeith, in 1806. He was the son of a land surveyor, and when a boy was apprenticed to a house-painter in Edinburgh, but having evinced a decided taste and ability for art, his engagement was cancelled, and he entered the Trustees' Academy under Andrew Wilson, where he had for fellow-students David Octavius Hill, Robert Scott Lauder, and others. William Simson, who was one of the older students, became his most intimate friend and acknowledged master, and from their frequent sketching expeditions together Crawford imbibed many of the best qualities of that able artist. His early efforts in art were exhibited in the Royal Institution, and his first contributions to the annual exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy appeared in 1831, two of these being taken from lowland scenery in Scotland, and the third being the portrait of a lady. Although not one of the founders of the Academy, Crawford was one of its earliest elected members. His name appears in the original list of associates, but having withdrawn from the body before its first exhibition, it was not until 1839 that he became an associate. Meanwhile he visited Holland, whither he went several times afterwards, and studied very closely the Dutch masters, whose influence in forming his picturesque style was seen in nearly all that he painted. The ample materials which he gathered in that country and in his native land afforded subjects for a long series of landscapes and coast scenes, chiefly, however, Scottish; but it was not till 1848, in which year he was elected
