British scholar and journalist, born in Berwickshire in 1783. He was left an orphan at the age of twelve, and commenced life in a law office, but soon left that place for Edinburgh, where he became a clerk to a writer to the Signet. While in this capacity he was assiduous in the work of self-education; he acquired German from a German musician, and Italian from a refugee. He was the author of a Life of Tasso (1810), in which year he went to London, and was engaged as a Parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle, of which journal he afterward became editor. Charles Dickens was one of his reporters, and John Stuart Mill praised his conduct of that journal. He retired from the editorship in 1843, and died in 1855.
