Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/338

 bishop of Gloucester. This small, but highly original work, consists of six chapters; 1st, of the conduct and character of Gallio; 2d, of the time at which the Christian religion became known at Rome; 3d, of the cause of the persecution of the Christians under Nero, in which the hypothesis of Gibbon is examined; 4th, of the eminent heathens who are said, by Gibbon, to have contemned Christianity, viz. Seneca, the Plinys, elder and younger, Tacitus, Galen, Epictetus, Plutarch, and Marcus Antoninus. This chapter is particularly interesting to the admirer of heathen philosophers and heathen philosophy; 5th, is an illustration of a conjecture of Gibbon respecting the silence of Dion Cassius concerning the Christians; and the 6th, treats of the circumstances respecting Christianity, that are to be found in the Augustan history. There can scarcely be a doubt, that all these works treating of the early ages of Christianity, were suggested by the misrepresentations of Gibbon, and were they circulated as widely as Gibbon's work, would be found a complete antidote. His lordship, however, was not satisfied with this indirect mode of defence, and, in 1786, published An Inquiry into the Secondary Causes which Mr Gibbon has assigned for the rapid growth of Christianity; in which he has most triumphantly set aside his conclusions. This performance he gratefully and affectionately inscribed to Richard Hurd, bishop of Worcester. The same year, his lordship published sketches of the lives of John Barclay; of John Hamilton, a secular priest; of Sir James Ramsay, a general officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden; of George Leslie, a capuchin friar; and of Mark Alexander Boyd. These lives were written and published as a specimen of the manner in which a biographica Scotica might be executed, and we do not know that he proceeded any further with the design. In 1788, he published, from her original MSS. the opinions of Sarah, duchess of Marlborough; with notes, corrective of her ladyship's splenetic humour; and, in 1790, he translated and published, with notes and illustrations, The Address of Q. Sept. Tertullian to Scapula Tertullus, proconsul of Africa. This address contains many particulars relating to the church after the third century, and in the notes some strange inaccuracies of Mr Gibbon are detected.

This was the last work which lord Hailes lived to publish. His constitution had been long in an enfeebled state, which so much diligence in study must have tended to increase. He continued, however, to prosecute his studies and to attend his duty on the bench, till within three days of his death, which happened on the 29th of November, 1792, in the 66th year of his age. His lordship was twice married. By his first wife, Anne Brown, only daughter of lord Coalston, one of the judges of the court of session, he left issue one daughter, who inherited his estate. By his second wife, Helen Ferguson, youngest daughter of lord Kilkerran, he left also issue, one daughter. Having no male issue, his baronetcy descended to his nephew. Of the character of lord Hailes, there can be but one opinion. As an able lawyer and an upright judge, he stands eminently conspicuous in an age and a country where such characters were not rare, and when the exercise of such qualities, from their superabundance, scarcely could merit praise. As a man of general erudition, he stands, if we except Warburton, almost without a rival in the age he lived in. His skill in classical learning, the belles lettres, and historical antiquities, especially those of his own country, have been universally admitted, and had popularity been his intention, as it was of too many of his contemporaries, there cannot be a doubt but that he could have made himself the most shining meteor among them. Instead, however, of fixing upon subjects that might interest the frivolous, or draw upon him the smiles of the fashionable and the gay, he sedulously devoted his studies to such subjects as he thought particularly called for by the circumstances