dry minuteness of a special pleader; and as he was always solicitous to make, he may have succeeded sometimes in finding a flaw."[1] Hume spoke of him with contempt. "He is a godly man; feareth the Lord and escheweth evil, and works out his salvation with fear and trembling. None of the books he publishes are of his writing they are all historical manuscripts, of little or no consequence."[2] "Nothing delighted him more," writes Ramsay of Ochtertyre, "than to demolish some historical fabric which length of time had rendered venerable. I lent an old lady the first volume of his Annals. She was so ill-pleased with the rejection of some popular stories of Wallace, that she said she would drive the powder out of his lordship's wig if she were by him."[3] With all his critical power he was a believer in Ossian. Burke, who once met him at dinner, "found him a clever man, and generally knowing.""[4]
He had been educated at Eton, and there one day had noticed a little black-looking boy, who had come up "to show for college, i.e., to stand for a scholarship on the foundation."
"After being examined lie was found entitled to be placed high in the fourth form, if he could make a copy of Latin verses in a given time. As he knew nothing of the matter, his friend had him throw the theme assigned him over the window[5] in a quill, and he would convey him the verses ere they were wanted. He told the door-keeper to carry a pen-case to the lad under examination, who exhibited the theme, and was elected. For some months Dalrymple lent him his aid in versifying. Dr. Hallam, now Dean of Bristol and Canon of Westminster, confessed many years after, with tears in his eyes, that next to the providence of God he owed all that he had to the philanthropy of Sir David Dalrymple."[6]
If, as seems likely, the examination was competitive, the boy who did not get the scholarship might not have taken altogether the same view of the matter as the pious and tearful dean. Dr. Hallam was the father of the historian, and the grandfather of Arthur Hallam. Had it not been for Lord Hailes's good-natured roguery the In Memoriam might never have been written.
New Hailes, as Johnson's host told Ramsay of Ochtertyre, "had been first made by Mr. Smith, a Popish architect employed in fitting up King James's chapel at the Abbey. He planted the oldest trees. It was acquired by Lord Hailes's grandfather, the Lord Advocate, who gave it its present name."[7] We may wonder
