Physicians at Edinburgh, and to him the university of that city was indebted for its useful appendage, the Botanic Garden.
Part of his lordship's time in his latter years was spent at a marine villa which he built on the edge of the cliff at Christ Church, in Hampshire, overlooking the Needles and the Isle of Wight. Here his principal delight was to listen to the melancholy roar of the sea; of which the plaintive sounds were probably congenial to a spirit soured with what he believed to be the ingratitude of mankind. His lordship died at his house in South Audley Street, London, March 10, 1792, hi the seventy-ninth year of his age. Of his private character and manners, which may now properly be touched upon, an acute observer has written as follows: "I never knew a man with whom one could be so long tete a tete without being tired. His knowledge was so extensive, and consequently his conversation so varied, that one thought one's self in the company of several persons, with the advantage of being sure of an even temper in a man whose goodness, politeness, and attention, were never wanting to those who lived with him."[1]
STUART, (Dr) Gilbert, an eminent historical essayist, was born at Edinburgh in 1742. His father was Mr George Stuart, professor of humanity (Latin) and Roman antiquities, in the university of Edinburgh. Gilbert received an accomplished education in his native city, under the superintendence of his father. His education was directed towards qualifying him for the bar; but it is questionable whether his magnificent opinion of his own abilities permitted him ever seriously to think of becoming an ordinary practising advocate. Before he was twenty-two years of age, he made what was considered a splendid entrance on the career of authorship, by publishing an "Historical Dissertation concerning the English Constitution;" the circumstance, that four editions of a work on a subject requiring so much information and power of thought, yet which almost every man possessed knowledge enough to criticise, were speedily issued, is of itself sufficient evidence that the young author possessed a very powerful intellect.[2] When we consider the reputation of his father, it cannot perhaps be argued as a very strong additional evidence of the esteem in which the work was held, that the university of Edinburgh conferred on the author the degree of Doctor of Laws. His next literary labour was the editing of the second edition of Sullivan's Lectures on the English Constitution, in 1772, to which he prefixed a "Discourse on the Government and Laws of England." Dr Stuart endeavoured to obtain one of the law chairs in the university of Edinburgh, whether that of Scottish or of civil law, the writers who have incidentally noticed the circumstances of his life, do not mention; nor are they particular as to the period, which would appear from his conduct to his opponents, in the Edinburgh Magazine of 1773, to have been some time before that year,[3] Whether he possessed a knowledge of his subject sufficiently minute for the task of teaching it to others, may have been a matter of doubt; his talents and general learning were certainly sufficiently high, but his well-earned character for dissipation, the effect of which was not softened by the supercilious arrogance of his manners,
- ↑ Memoirs of a Traveller. now in Retirement, iv. 177.
- ↑ Kerr (Life of Smellie) and others say he was then only twenty-two years old; yet there is no edition of this work older than 1768, when, according to the same authorities, he must have been twenty-six years old.
- ↑ According to the list of Professors in Bower's History of the University of Edinburgh, the only law chair succeeded to for many years at this period of Stuart's life, is that of the law of nature and nations, presented to Mr James Balfour, in 1764. If we can suppose this person to have been Mr Stuart's successful opponent, we would find him disappointed by the same fortunate person who snatched the moral philosophy chair from Hume. The list seems, however, to be imperfect. No notice, for fhstance, is taken of any one entering on the Scots law chair in 1765, when it was resigned by Erskine.
