Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 6.djvu/90

460 able even for the credulous age in which he lived. He appears to have believed, without question, every thing which was told him; and, believing it, has carefully recorded it. After detailing at some length, and with great gravity, all the circumstances of the mysterious summons of Plotcock, previous to the battle of Flodden Field, "Verily," he says, "the author of this, that caused me write the manner of the summons, was a landed gentleman, who was at that time twenty years of age, and was in the town the time of the said summons; and thereafter, when the field was stricken, he swore to me, there was no man that escaped that was called in this summons, but that one man alone which made his protestation."

The earnest and honest simplicity of the good old chronicler, however, is exceedingly amusing. He aims at nothing beyond a mere record of what he conceived to be facts, and these he goes on detailing, with a great deal of incoherence, and all the unintellectual precision of an artificial process, neither feeling, passion, nor mind ever appearing to mingle in the slightest degree with his labours. These characteristics of the chronicles of Lindsay have greatly impaired their credibility, and have almost destroyed all confidence in them as authorities.

Where he is corroborated by other historians, or by an association of well known and well established circumstances, he may be trusted, but, where this is not the case, his testimony ought to be received with caution; for, where he does not absolutely create, he is almost sure to exaggerate, and is thus in any event a very unsafe guide.

If Lindsay was but an indifferent chronicler, he was a still worse poet, as will be conceded, it is presumed, after a perusal of the following introductory stanzas of a poetical address to Robert Stewart, bishop of Caithness, we fixed to the Chronicles:

The Chronicles begin with James II., 1436, and end with queen Mary, 1565. This latter reign, however, is not completed, being carried down only a little beyond the period at which the marriage of that unfortunate princess with Darnley took place.

LITHGOW,, a well known traveller of the seventeenth century, was born in the parish of Lanark, in the year 1583. Nothing is known of his birth or parentage, or of the earlier period of his life. He seems to have attracted very little general notice prior to the publication of his travels in 1614; and even the celebrity which these acquired for him, does not appear to have suggested any inquiry into his previous history.

There is no reason, however, to believe otherwise than that he was a person