son of Glasgow, Dr Henry, author of the History of Great Britain, and Mr David Hume, now one of the barons of exchequer. Some other papers of no inconsiderable merit were supposed to be from ladies. The Mirror was commenced on the 23d of January, 1779, and finished with the 110th number on the 27th of May, 1780. It appeared in one small folio sheet, which was sold at three half pence, and though not above four hundred were ever sold of any particular number, the public approbation was so high as to demand the immediate republication of the whole in three volumes duodecimo.
Mr Craig's contributions to the Mirror, which were the most numerous, next to those of Mr Mackenzie, are indicated in a later edition of the work:—
To the Lounger, which was started some years after by the same club, he also contributed many excellent papers.
Lord Craig, who possessed originally a very weak constitution, enjoyed so poor a state of health in his latter years as to be obliged to resign his place on the justiciary bench. He died on the 8th of July, 1813. The mental qualifications of this eminent person were of a very high order. Although his practice at the bar had never been very extensive, he was much esteemed in his character as a judge, his decisions being remarkable for their clearness and precision, while his habits were of a singularly industrious order, considering the state of his health. In private life he was beloved on account of his gentle, unassuming manners, and his eminently benevolent and sociable disposition.
CRAWFORD, David, of Drumsoy, near Glasgow, historiographer to queen Anne, was born in 1665, and educated to the bar. Having abandoned professional pursuits in a great measure, for the sake of studying Scottish antiquities and history, he was appointed historiographer royal for Scotland by queen Anne, to whom he was probably recommended by his being a zealous tory and Jacobite. His political prepossessions, which, as usual, extended to a keen zeal in behalf of queen Mary, induced him in 1706 to publish, at London, his well-known work, entitled u Memoirs of the affairs of Scotland, containing a full and impartial account of the Revolution in that kingdom, begun in 1567, faithfully compiled from an authentic MS." The avowed purpose of this publication was to furnish an antidote to the pernicious tendency of Buchanan's history. The substance of the work, he says he derived from an ancient MS. presented to him by Sir James Baird of Saughtonhall, and which seemed to have been composed by a contemporary of the events described. In executing the task which he had imposed upon himself, the learned editor appears to have acted after the manner of a good partizan. In order that his work might the more perfectly meet the calumnies of Buchanan, he expunged from it every passage which told in behalf of the views taken by that writer, and introduced others instead from the contemporary tory writers. The work was reprinted by Goodall in 1767, and still continues to be a popular narrative of the events of the four Regencies. In 1804, Mr Malcolm Laing, author of the History of Scotland during the seventeenth century, having obtained possession of the original MS. used by Crawford, published it, with a preface, denouncing the historiographer-royal as a rank impostor, inasmuch as he had set off that as a work of authority which had been vitiated for party purposes by his own hand. The same view has been taken of Mr Crawford's character by Mr Thomas Thomson, in the preface to a new print of the MS. for the use of the Bannatyne Club, which appeared in 1825, under the title of "The History and life of king James the sext." With deference to these writers, it may be suggested, in Crawford's defence, that his work was never pretended to be a faithful transcript of the original MS. except on the title page, where it is so stated by the bookseller ad captandum, in obvious contradiction of the statement made by the editor within. The work comes
