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 charge with part of the 15th light dragoons at Villiers-en-Couche in May 1793, and received the order of Maria Theresa with them, was promoted major in his regiment in June, and lieutenant-colonel on 14 Dec. 1794. After his return to England he was elected M.P. for the county of Fife in 1796, went on half-pay in 1798, was promoted colonel of the 14th garrison battalion on 1 Jan. 1801, was re-elected M.P. in 1802, and again placed on half-pay in 1803 on the reduction of his battalion. He did not again stand for parliament in 1806, and applied repeatedly for active employment. He was promoted major-general on 25 April 1808, and in the following year joined Lord Wellington's army in the Peninsula, and took command of a brigade of cavalry. Wellington believed him to be an officer of real ability, and when Major-general Robert Craufurd went home invalided from the lines of Torres Vedras he gave Erskine the temporary command of the light division. A more unfortunate choice could not have been made. Erskine was brave to a fault, and his recklessness during the pursuit after Masséna in the spring of 1811 nearly ruined the light division on more than one occasion. At Sabugal, in particular, he launched his battalions at the retreating enemy in a fog, and it was only by the skill of his brigadiers, Barnard and Beckwith, that a great disaster was averted; for when the fog lifted Ney was found with his whole corps d'armée in an exceedingly strong position. When Craufurd returned, Erskine was transferred to the command of the cavalry attached to the southern force under the command of Sir Rowland Hill, in succession to General Long. He was selected with Picton, Leith, and Cole for the rank of local lieutenant-general in Spain and in Portugal in September 1811. He commanded Hill's cavalry in his advance on Madrid in 1812 after the victory of Salamanca, and covered his retreat when he had to retire from Andalusia, coincidently with Wellington's retreat from Burgos. Erskine had already shown several signs of insanity during this period, and at last it became so obvious that he was ordered to leave the army. On 14 May 1813 he threw himself from a window in Lisbon, and was killed on the spot. As he died unmarried, his baronetcy of Torry became extinct.

[Burke's Extinct Baronetage; Army Lists; Napier's Peninsular War; Cope's History of the Rifle Brigade; Larpent's Journal in the Peninsula.] 

ERSKINE, WILLIAM, (1769–1822), friend of Sir Walter Scott, son of the Rev. William Erskine, episcopalian minister of Muthill, Perthshire, was born in 1769. He was educated at the university of Glasgow, and while attending it was boarded in the house of Andrew Macdonald, episcopalian clergyman and author of ‘Vimonda,’ from whom, according to Lockhart, he derived a strong passion for old English literature. He passed advocate at the Scottish bar 3 July 1790, and became the intimate friend and literary confidant of Scott. In 1792 Erskine, with Scott and other young advocates, formed a class for the study of German. According to Lockhart the companionship of Erskine, owing to his special accomplishments as a classical scholar and acquaintance with the ‘severe models of antiquity,’ was highly serviceable to Scott as a student of German drama and romance. Lockhart represents him as being mercilessly severe on ‘the mingled absurdities and vulgarities of German detail.’ It was Erskine who negotiated for Scott's translation of ‘Lenore’ in 1796. In 1801, while in London, Erskine happened to show the volume to ‘Monk’ Lewis, who thereupon ‘anxiously requested that Scott might be enlisted as a contributor to his miscellany entitled “Tales of Wonder.”’ Soon after Scott began his great career as an author, he resolved to trust to the detection of minor inaccuracies to two persons only, James Ballantyne and Erskine, the latter being ‘the referee whenever the poet hesitated about taking the advice of the zealous typographer.’ The friends joined in keeping up the delusion that Erskine and not Scott was the author of the portions of the ‘Bridal of Triermain,’ and wrote a preface intended to ‘throw out the knowing ones.’ Scott dedicated to Erskine the third canto of ‘Marmion,’ which was published in February 1808. Erskine was appointed sheriff depute of Orkney 6 June 1809, and in 1814 Scott accompanied him and other friends on a voyage to those islands (see chaps. xxviii–xxx. vol. ii. of Life of Scott). Lockhart ascribes to Erskine the critical estimate of the Waverley novels included in Scott's own notice in the ‘Quarterly Review’ of ‘Old Mortality,’ in answer to the sectarian attacks of Dr. Thomas M'Crie against his representation of the covenanters. By Scott's unwearied exertions on his behalf Erskine was in January 1822 promoted to the bench as Lord Kinneder. The charge against him of an improper liaison, a groundless and malignant calumny, which Scott said ‘would have done honour to the invention of the devil himself,’ so seriously affected his health and spirits that, though it was proved to be utterly groundless, he never recovered from the shock caused by the accusation. It ‘struck,’ said