The causes of his success as a preacher are obvious. His fine appearance, his flexible and sympathetic voice, his manifest sincerity, the perfect lucidity and artistic symmetry of his address, and the brilliance with which he illustrated his points would have attracted hearers even had he had little to say. But he had much to say. No sermons were ever more compact. They were the utterance of a full, vivid, and penetrating mind. He was not, indeed, a scientific theologian; but his insight into the principles of the spiritual life is unrivalled; and for men approaching the truth from the same side as himself he is an invaluable guide. His own lonely and independent struggle had taught him where foothold was secure, and had enabled him to throw light on many a forgotten stepping-stone of truth. As his biographer says, thousands have found in his sermons “a living source of impulse, a practical direction of thought, a key to many of the problems of theology, and above all a path to spiritual freedom.” In his hands spiritual facts assume an aspect of reasonableness which is irresistible. Religion is felt to be no longer a mystery for the exercise of professional minds, nor an extravagance suitable for enthusiastic temperaments, but an essential of life for all, and in line with the order of things in which we now are. For his sermons obtained their large circulation partly because they were new in kind. They marked the transition from the period in which religion was treated as a series of propositions to that in which it is presented as an essence penetrating the whole of human life. The accusations of heretical and dangerous teaching which were persistently brought against him, though possibly not so malignant as he himself supposed, were certainly more mischievous than the teaching against which they were levelled. Few men have ever more perfectly understood the spirit of Christ, and few have so fully made that spirit their own.

Robertson’s literary remains include five volumes of sermons, two volumes of expository lectures, on Genesis and on the Epistles to the Corinthians, a volume of miscellaneous addresses, and a Key to ‘In Memoriam.’ Robertson’s Life has been written by Stopford A. Brooke. (M. D. )

ROBERTSON Thomas William (1829-1871), English dramatist, was born on 9th January 1829. As a dramatist he had a brief but very brilliant career. It is not too much to say that he was the most successful and distinguished writer of plays in his generation. The son of a provincial actor and manager, chief of a “circuit” that ranged from Bristol to Cambridge, Robertson was familiar with the stage from his childhood; but it was not till the last seven years of his life that he made his mark. He was never, as he admitted himself, very successful as an actor. He tried his hand also at writing plays, and a farcical comedy by him, A Night's Adventure, was produced at the Olympic under Farren’s management as early as 1851. But this did not make good his footing, and he remained for some years longer in the provinces, varying, his work as an actor with miscellaneous contributions to newspapers. In 1860 he went to London with the intention, it is said, of making his living by journalism and light literature. He edited a mining journal and contributed to it a novel afterwards dramatized with the title Shadow Tree Shaft. He wrote a farce entitled A Cantab, which was played at the Strand in 1861. Then, in 1864, came his first marked success, David Garrick, produced at the Haymarket with Sothern in the principal character.. It was not, however, till the production of Society at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1865, under the management of Miss Marie Wilton, afterwards Mrs Bancroft, that the originality and cleverness of the dramatist were fully recognized. Play-writer and company were exactly suited one to another; the plays and the acting together—the small size of the playhouse being also in their favour—were at once recognized as a new thing, and, while some critics sneered at the “cup-and-saucer comedy,” voted it absurdly realistic, said there was nothing in it but commonplace life represented without a trace of Sheridanian wit and sparkle, all London flocked to the little house in Tottenham Street, and the stage was at once inundated with imitations of the new style of acting and the new kind of play.

Robertson, although his health was already undermined, followed up Society in quick succession with the series of characteristic plays which made the reputation of himself, the company, and the theatre. Ours was produced in 1866, Caste in 1867, Play in 1868, School in 1869, M.P. in 1870. For twenty years there probably has not been a week, hardly a night, in which some one of Robertson’s plays has not been produced somewhere in Great Britain,.

and still they show no sign of abating popularity. The masterly stage-craft is undoubtedly one of the elements in this remarkable conquest of the play-going public; the purity and generous morality of the plays another; the dialogue—which is always bright and clever, without any straining after or indeed much attaining to wit—a third; the humour, distinctness, and typical representativeness of the characters a fourth. That there is more art and individuality in the plays than critics at first were willing to admit is clear from the fact that none of Robertson’s numerous imitators have succeeded in catching his happy knack. Another proof of something like genius—dramatic genius if not literary genius—is the skill with which he repeats the same idea with such variations that each time it is as fresh as if it were new. Again and again his situations owe their point to the contrast between generous kindness of heart and sordid worldliness, or between the ardent trustful affections of youth and the cynicism of disenchanted middle age. Pleasant sunny brightness and ingenuity within a narrow range constitute Robertson’s distinction rather than breadth or fertility or striking brilliancy of wit. He knew his powers and worked steadily within them, not striving to go beyond. With the exception of David Garrick and Home, written for the Haymarket, and Dreams for the Gaiety, all his well-known plays were written for the Prince of Wales Theatre, with which his distinctive style of comedy is identified. Unhappily he did not live long to enjoy his success, but died in London in February 1871.

ROBERTSON William (1721 -1793), an eminent Scottish historian, born at Borthwick, Midlothian, on the 19th September 1721, was the eldest son of the Rev. William Robertson and of Eleanor Pitcairn. He received his early education at the school of Dalkeith,—at that time one of the best in Scotland; but at the age of twelve he was removed to the university of Edinburgh, where he soon manifested that sustained ardour in the pursuit of knowledge which he preserved throughout his long life. On his commonplace books, written when he was a mere youth, he always inscribed the motto: Vita sine literis mors est. He was from the first intended for the ministry; when twenty-two years old he was presented to the living of Gladsmuir in East Lothian, and almost immediately afterwards he lost both his father and his mother, who died within a few hours of each other. The support and education of a younger brother and six sisters then devolved upon him, and, though his income was only £100 a year, he sheltered them all in his house and “continued to educate his sisters under his own roof till they were settled respectably in the world” (Stewart). Robertson’s inclination for study was never allowed to interfere with his duties as a parish minister, which he rather increased than diminished: “it was his custom during the summer months to convene on Sunday morning the youth of the parish of Gladsmuir half an hour before the commencement of the regular service of the church, and to employ that time in explaining to them the doctrines of the Catechism.” His attention to his pastoral duties and his power and distinction as a preacher had made him a local celebrity while still a young man.

His energy and decision of character were brought out vividly by the rebellion of 1745. When Edinburgh seemed in danger of falling into the hands of the rebels he laid aside the pacific habits of his profession and joined the volunteers in the capital. When the city was surrendered he was one of the small band who repaired to Haddington and offered their services to the commander of the royal forces. Such a man could not remain in obscurity, and in the year 1751, when not quite thirty years of age, we find him already taking a prominent part in the business of the General Assembly. On the first occasion when he spoke (in seconding a motion by John Home for the suspension of certain presbyters who had refused to take part in an unpopular settlement) he was listened to with great attention, but his words had so little immediate effect on the assembly that on a division he was left in a minority of eleven against two hundred. A young mart might well have been daunted by such a defeat, but his energy and self reliance refused to yield. His great oratorical power, at once lucid, cogent, and persuasive, had made an impression on men’s minds, and within so short a period as one year, when he again advocated his principles in connexion with what is known as the Inverkeithing case, he carried the house completely with him, and with the deposition of Thomas Gillespie secured a triumph for the policy he had adopted. From that moment his influence in the councils of the Scottish Church as leader of the “moderate party” was for many years nearly supreme (compare Presbyterianism, vol. xix. p. 685). The production of Home’s tragedy of Douglas on the Edinburgh stage (1757) afforded Robertson another occasion for displaying that union of courage and caution which formed a marked feature of his character. Although the influence of moderatism was now visibly in the ascendant, there was still enough of the older spirit of Scottish Puritanism left to take alarm and raise an outcry against a stage play written by a minister and witnessed by many clergymen who were the author’s friends. One of these, the famous Dr Alexander Carlyle, was prosecuted before the synod for having gone to the theatre, and he tells us in his Autobiography that he purposely contrived to exclude Robertson from the post of moderator because “his speaking would be of more consequence if not in the chair.” This testimony is the more noteworthy as Carlyle shows throughout his memoirs a grudging and unfriendly tone when speaking of Robertson. The latter, indeed, was able to render his incriminated colleague great service on this occasion, not only by his talent as a speaker, but by reason of the detached and unassailable position which his customary prudence had led him to take up. He never went to the play himself, he said, but that was not because he thought it wrong but because he had given a solemn promise to his father never to do so. He could not therefore join in censuring other clergymen who were held by no such vow as he had made: “it was sacred to him, but not obligatory on them.” Carlyle was acquitted and Robertson had the credit—which he perhaps somewhat too constantly aimed at and generally secured—of standing well with all parties, of advocating the claims of culture and liberal sentiment without giving ground to their opponents for attacking his personal conduct and character.

But during all this period of prominent activity in the public life of Edinburgh Robertson was busy with those historical labours which have given him a permanent place in British literature. He had conceived the plan of his History of Scotland as early as the year 1753; in July 1757 he had proceeded as far as the Gowrie conspiracy, and in November of the following year David Hume, then residing in London, was receiving the proof-sheets from Strahan and making friendly but searching criticisms on the work in letters to the author. Till he had finished his book Robertson had never left his native country; but the publication of his history necessitated a journey to London, and he passed the early months of the year 1758 partly in the capital and partly in leisurely rambles in the counties of England. He returned on horseback in company with Alexander Carlyle and other Scotsmen, riding all the way from London to Edinburgh in about eighteen days.

The success of the History of Scotland was immediate and splendid, and within a month a second edition was called for. Before the end of the author’s life the book had reached its fourteenth edition; and in the opinion of some it remains Robertson’s greatest work. It soon brought him other rewards than literary fame. In 1759 he was appointed chaplain of Stirling Castle, in 1761 one of His Majesty’s chaplains in ordinary, and in 1762 he was chosen principal of the university of Edinburgh. Two years later the office of king’s historiographer was revived in his favour with a salary of £200 a year. His income greatly surpassed the revenue of any Presbyterian minister before him and at least equalled that of some of the bishops when Episcopacy was established in Scotland. It is the more surprising therefore that this moment of exceptional prosperity should have been chosen by some of his most valued friends to advise him to forsake the Scottish for the English Church and try for preferment south of the Tweed; and the surprise becomes wonder when we learn that those friends were Sir Gilbert Elliot and David Hume. The imprudence, to say nothing of the questionable morality, of such a step would seem too glaring to allow of its recommendation by any honourable well-wishers. Perhaps no man was more fitted than Robertson to measure and reject such injudicious advice, and he probably never gave the matter a second thought. He remained at home among his own people.

The rest of Robertson’s life was uneventful to a degree even surpassing the proverbial uneventfulness of the lives of scholars. He was casting about for another historical subject in the very year in which his first w τ ork appeared, and he was wont to consult his friends on the choice of a period with a naïveté which shows how little the arduousness of historical research was then understood. Hume advised him to -write a history of Greece or else lives in the manner of Plutarch. Dr John Blair urged him to write a complete history of England, while Horace Walpole suggested a history of learning. It must be recorded to Robertson’s credit that he showed a preference from the first for the subject which he ultimately selected, The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. He took uncommon pains with the work and devoted to it ten consecutive years of labour. It appeared in three volumes quaιto in 1769. In 1777 he published his History of America and in 1791 his Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India, which concluded his historical labours and appeared only two years before his death, which occurred near Edinburgh on the 11th June 1793. His fame had long been European, and he left no rival in the field of historical composition save Gibbon alone.

For an adequate appreciation of Robertson’s position in British literature, and more especially of his rank as an historian, we have to consider the country and the age in which he was born and his own personal qualities and limits.

Considering the small size and poverty of the country, Scotland had made a more than creditable figure in literature in the great age of the Reformation and the Renaissance. Its scholars, civilians, and professors of logic and philosophy were welcomed wherever learning flourished, except, perhaps, in England. All Europe could not show a more brilliant writer and publicist than Buchanan, and “the best romance that ever was written” (the words are Cowper’s) was produced by a Scottish contemporary of Shakespeare, viz., the once famous Argeηis of John Barclay. But the early triumphs of Scottish genius were all won in a foreign if familiar idiom, the common language of the learned; and when Latin retreated before the growing importance of modern tongues the Scots had no literary vernacular on which to fall back. For a century and a half (1600-1750) a Scottish writer to be read was forced to use a foreign language,—Latin, English, and even occasionally French. As Burton has well remarked, this alone was sufficient to account in a large measure for the literary barrenness of the country. There was unquestionably another cause at work,—the fervent religious zeal with which the principles of the Reformation had been embraced: neither science, literature, nor art could obtain much attention from men who regarded them all as “deceitful vanities,” leading the mind away from the one thing needful. In a small and sparsely peopled country, without wealth, commerce, or even politics in the larger sense, theology became a too absorbing and unique mental stimulus. This was, we may say, proved by the fact that as soon as the union with England opened a wider scope for Scottish energy and enterprise the theological temperature immediately fell,—a change witnessed with natural alarm by the more zealous clergy. “The rise of our too great fondness for trade,” writes the Rev. Robert Wodrow in 1709, “to the neglect of our more valuable interests, I humbly think, will be written on our judgment” (Buckle, vol. ii. p. 301). The growth of wealth stimulated the growth of the other great factor of civilization, that of knowledge, and by the middle of the 18th century, just at the time when Robertson was planning his History of Scotland, a wide spirit of inquiry was abroad. Scottish intellect had risen from the tomb in which it had lain entranced for more than a hundred years. The Scottish contribution to British literature in the last half of the century is distinctly superior to that produced in the southern portion of the island. In philosophy and political and economic science the balance is immensely in favour of Scotland. Robertson was therefore no inexplicable prodigy—an “obscure Scotch parson” writing “like a minister of state,” as it pleased Walpole and the London fops to regard him. He lived in a society far more propitious to high literary work than could be found in London or the English universities.

The connexion between philosophy and history is closer than appears at first sight. The study of man and his faculties, even ontological speculations as to the nature and origin of the universe, lead by a logical sequence to a consideration of human evolution in time, that is, to history. The coincidence of philosophical speculation with historical achievement so repeatedly manifested cannot be accidental. The topic cannot be developed here; but from the days of the Attic historians, who lived in an atmosphere electric with speculation, to the Hegelian historical school of Germany, the higher planes of history are found in near proximity to loftier peaks of philosophy. Hume, wonderful in all things, was perhaps most wonderful in this, that in him the two characters of the philosopher and the historian were completely united. He did not only, like Kant and Hegel, speculate about history; he wrote it. Again, we must admire the peculiar fortune of Robertson: he lived during many years in close contact and intimacy with the greatest philosophic genius of his age, perhaps of modern times.

Of the three great British historians of the 18th century two were Scotsmen. The exact place of Robertson with regard to his two friends Hume and Gibbon, and to such historians as the rest of Europe had to offer, presents a question of some nicety, because it is complicated by extraneous considerations, so to speak, which should not weigh in an abstract estimate, but cannot be excluded in a concrete and practical one. If we regard only Robertson’s potential historic power, the question is not so much whether he was equal to either of his two friends as whether he was not superior to both. The man who wrote the review of the state of Europe prefixed to the

History of Charles V., or even the first book of the History of Scotland, showed that he had a wider and more synthetic conception of history than either the author of the Decline and Fall or the author of the History of England. These two portions of Robertson’s work, with all their shortcomings in the eye of modern criticism, have a distinctive value which time cannot take away. He was one of the first to see the importance of general ideas in history. He saw that the immediate narrative of events with which he was occupied needed a background of broad and connected generalizations, referring to the social state of which the detailed history formed a part. But he did more than this. In the appendix to the view of Europe called “Proofs and Illustrations” he enters into the difficult and obscure question of land tenure in Frankish times, and of the origin of the feudal system, with a sagacity and knowledge which distinctly advanced the comprehension of this period beyond the point at which it had been left by Du Bos, Montesquieu, and Mably. He was fully acquainted with the original documents,—many of them, we may conjecture, not easy to procure in Scotland. It must have been a genuine aptitude for historical research of a scientific kind which led Robertson to undertake the labour of these austere disquisitions of which there were not many in his day who saw the importance. Gibbon, so superior to him for wide reading and scholarship, has pointedly avoided them. It need hardly be said that many, perhaps the majority, of Robertson’s views on this thorny topic are out of date now. But he deserves the honour of a pioneer in one of the most obscure if also important lines of inquiry connected with European history. On the other hand, it must be admitted that he showed himself only too tame a follower of Voltaire in his general appreciation of the Middle Ages, which he regarded with the mingled ignorance and prejudice common in the l8th century. In this particular he was not at all in advance of his age.

The neglect and gradual oblivion which are now overtaking the greater part of Robertson’s historical work are owing to no fault of his. He had not and could not have the requisite materials: they were not published or accessible. Justice requires that we should estimate his performance in view of the means at his command, and few critics would hesitate to subscribe to the verdict of Buckle, “that what he effected with his materials was wonderful.” His style, whether of narrative or disquisition, is singularly clear, harmonious, and persuasive. The most serious reproach made against it is that it is correct to a fault and lacks idiomatic vigour, and the charge is not without foundation. But there can be no doubt that, if Robertson’s writings are less read than they formerly were, the fact is to be attributed to no defects of style but to the growth of knowledge and to the immense extension of historical research which has inevitably superseded his initiatory and meritorious labours. (j. c. mo.)