Scotch biographer, born in Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, on the 5th of December 1778. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and published, while there, a Life of Robert Ferguson. From 1820 to 1849 he was librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. He was the contributor of the biographies of Scottish authors to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and wrote Elements of English Composition (1801); The Lives of Scottish Poets (1804); Memoirs of the Life and Writings of George Buchanan (1807); Observations on the Study of Civil Law (1815); and a History of Scottish Poetry from the Middle Ages Down to the Close of the Seventeenth Century (1861). He died in Edinburgh on the 10th of March 1860.
