In 1766 Dalrymple was raised to the bench of the court of session with the title of Lord Hailes, and ten years later he became a judge of the justiciary or criminal court. In the latter capacity he was distinguished for humanity at a time when the criminal bench was disgraced by opposite qualities. The solemnity of his manner in administering oaths and pronouncing sentence specially struck his contemporaries. As a judge in the civil court he was admired for diligence and patience, keeping under restraint his power of sarcasm. In knowledge of the history of law he was surpassed by none of his brethren, though among them were Elchies, Kaimes, and Monboddo.
He contributed from an early period to the ‘World’ and ‘Gentleman's Magazine.’ In one of his papers in the latter journal he showed his acumen by detecting the spuriousness of a miniature of Milton which had deceived Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1753, before he had himself published anything of note, David Hume asked him to revise his ‘Inquiry into the Human Mind;’ but the principles of Dalrymple, who was an earnest believer in christianity, were not such as to promote intercourse with the good-natured sceptical philosopher. With Hume, Adam Smith, and even Principal Robertson, who led the learned society of Edinburgh at that time, he was never intimate. Though a whig and a presbyterian, he preferred the friendship of such men as Johnson and Burke, Warburton, Hurd, Dr. Abernethy, and Drummond, the bishop of Dunkeld. But Hailes was no bigot. Shortly after Hume's death he translated the fragment of his autobiography into Latin as elegant as the original. Perhaps the style as much as the man attracted him. Hailes was one of the curators of the Advocates' Library who censured Hume, then keeper of the library, for purchasing without their approval certain objectionable French works, a censure Hume never forgave, and which led to his retirement from the library. The few references to Hailes in Hume's correspondence are of an ironical character. He had suspected Hailes of being the author of the ‘Philosophical Essays,’ published in 1768, in answer to Kaimes's ‘Essays on Morality and Natural Religion,’ in which there were some severe remarks on himself. When informed of his mistake by his correspondent, Sir Gilbert Elliot, he turned it off by a jest—‘I thought David had been the only christian who could write English on the other side of the Tweed.’ Hailes belonged to the Select Society, the best literary club of the Scottish capital, but living in the country, at his seat of New Hailes, near Inveresk, five miles from Edinburgh, he withdrew himself from general society, devoting himself to his studies and maintaining a correspondence with eminent English scholars and authors. It was from Hailes that Boswell first acquired the desire to know Johnson, and when they became intimate he was the channel through which Hailes sent his ‘Annals of Scotland’ for Johnson's revisal. Johnson in turn asked Hailes's opinion as that best worth having on Scotch law and history. When engaged in the Ossian controversy, he asked eagerly, ‘Is Lord Hailes on our side?’ Among Hailes's correspondents in England were Burke, Horace Walpole, Warton, Dr. Jortin, and James Boswell, and nearly the whole bench of English bishops, who were grateful to him for undertaking to refute Gibbon in his ‘Inquiry into the Secondary Causes which Mr. Gibbon has assigned for the rapid Growth of Christianity.’
Scarcely a year passed without one, and often two or three, publications from the indefatigable pen of Hailes; but many of these are translations, small tracts, or short biographical sketches. His publications, almost without exception, related to the early antiquities of christianity, which he deemed the best defence against the sceptical tendencies of the age, or to the antiquities and history of Scotland, which before his time had been critically examined by scarcely any writer. His most important work is the ‘Annals of Scotland,’ from Malcolm Canmore to Robert I, issued in 1776, and continued in 1779 to the accession of the house of Stuart, with an advertisement stating the author was prepared to have continued the ‘Annals of Scotland’ to the restoration of James I, ‘but there are various and invincible reasons which oblige him to terminate his work at the accession of the house of Stuart.’
The plan of this work was suggested by the ‘Chronological Abridgment of the History of France,’ by the President Hénault, published in 1768; but in this country it was and still remains a unique example of a matter-of-fact history, in which every point is verified by reference to the original source from which it is derived. Few inferences are drawn, still fewer generalisations. Johnson gave it high praise, and contrasts it with the ‘painted histories more to the taste of our age,’ a reflection, no doubt, on Gibbon and Robertson.
One of the few corrections which Johnson made in the ‘Annals’ was substituting, in the account of the war of independence, where Hailes had described his countrymen as ‘a free nation,’ the word ‘brave’ for ‘free,’ to which Hailes demurred that to call them
