Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, historical antiquary, born at Edinburgh, 28th October 1726, was the great grandson of the first Lord Stair. He was called to the Scottish bar in 1748, and in 1766 became a judge of the Court of Session as Lord Hailes, in 1776 a justiciary lord. At his country-seat of New Hailes, near Edinburgh, he gave his leisure to uninterrupted literary activity. He died 29 November 1792. Among his books are “A Discourse on the Gowrie Conspiracy” (1757); “Memorials relating to the Reigns of James I. and Charles I.” (1762–66); and “Annals of Scotland, 1057–1371” (1776–79). He wrote besides on legal antiquities and ancient church history, edited old Scotch poems, &c.
Personal
The indefatigable Sir David is translating Minutius Felix, and writing notes. Of the last, I have a large farrago in my hands, and am to keep them, I suppose, till his Arch-Critic arrives. This Sir David is a good, well-intentioned man, has learning and sense, but is withal immoderately vain; which I conclude, not from his writings so much (for then how should another friend of yours escape?) but from his teasing his friends so immoderately with his MSS. However, with all his imperfections upon his head, give me a writer—an animal that is now become a rara avis, and much to be stared at, even in our learned universities.
He was called to the bar at Edinburgh, February 23d, 1748, and was much admired for the elegant propriety of the Cases he drew. Though he had not attained to the highest rank as a practising lawyer, his character for sound knowledge and probity in the profession was so great that he was appointed one of the Judges of the Court of Session, in the room of Lord Nesbit, March 6th, 1766, and in May, 1776, one of the Lord Commissioners of Justiciary, in the room of Lord Coalston, who resigned. He died on the 29th of November.
As an oral pleader he was not successful. A defect in articulation prevented him from speaking fluently, and he was naturally an impartial critic rather than a jealous advocate. Much of the business of litigation in Scotland at this time was conducted, however, by writing pleadings, and he gained a solid reputation as a learned and accurate lawyer. There is no better specimen of such pleadings than the case for the Countess of Southerland in her claim for the peerage in the House of the Lords, which was drawn by Hailes as her guardian after he became judge. It won the cause, and is still appealed to by peerage lawyers for the demonstration of the descent of the older Scottish titles to and through females…. The solemnity of his manner in administering oaths and pronouncing sentences specially struck his contemporaries. As a judge in the civil court he was admired for diligence and patience, keeping under restraint his power of sarcasm. In knowledge of the history of law he was surpassed by none of his brethren, though among them were Elchies, Kaimes, and Monboddo.
An estimable man was this scholar; but a little less self-consciousness would have improved his lordship, who kept aloof from the genial society of Edinburgh lest it might impair his flawless dignity. Distant in manner, he was seldom met with even in the company of Ferguson and Blair and Adam Smith, for such friendly comradeship would jar on his prim punctiliousness, and vex his due regard for what was “becoming.”
General
“Lord Hailes’s ‘Annals of Scotland’ have not that painted form which is the taste of this age; but it is a book which will always sell, it has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such a punctuality of citation. I never before read Scotch history with certainty.”
His “Annals of Scotland” is a masterly performance; in which, and in some detached pieces of historical research, he was the first to elucidate properly the early part of the history of our country, and it is only to be regretted that he has not brought his work down to a later period, as it stops at a time when the history was becoming more and more interesting, and his materials more copious. “The Case of the Sutherland-peerage,” although originally a law-paper, written professionally when he was at the bar, at the time when the title of the young Countess, to the honours of her ancestors, was called in question, is one of the most profound disquisitions on the ancient peerages of Scotland anywhere to be met with.
The erudition of Lord Hailes was not of a dry and scholastic nature: he felt the beauties of the composition of the ancients; he entered with taste and discernment into the merits of the Latin poets, and that peculiar vein of delicate and ingenious thought which characterizes the Greek epigrammatists; and a few specimens which he has left of his own composition in that style, evince the hand of a master…. Lord Hailes was a man of wit, and possessed a strong feeling of the absurd and ridiculous in human conduct and character, which gave a keen edge of irony both to his conversation and writings. To his praise, however, it must be added, that that irony, if not always untinctured with prejudice, was never prompted by malignity, and was generally exerted in the cause of virtue and good morals. How much he excelled in painting the lighter weaknesses and absurdities of mankind, may be seen from the papers of his composition in the World and the Mirror. His private character was everything that is praiseworthy and respectable. In a word, he was an honour to the station which he filled, and to the age in which he lived.
These works by Lord Hailes [“Remains of Christian Antiquity”] are among the most elegant specimens of translation, and discover a profound acquaintance with the most minute circumstances of early Christian antiquity…. He was one of the most formidable antagonists of Gibbon. His “Inquiry into the Secondary Causes” is a most triumphant exposure of the sophistry and misrepresentations of that artful writer. The preceding works are now become scarce; but I know not a higher treat which can be enjoyed by a cultivated and curious mind than that which they afford.
The “Annals” of Hailes, written with the accuracy of a judge, which far exceeds the accuracy of the historian, has been the text-book of all subsequent writers on the period of Scottish history it covers. The earlier Celtic sources had not in his time been explored, except by Father Innes, and were imperfectly understood. Nor could he have carried on his work much further without encountering political and religious controversies. He was thus enabled to maintain throughout his whole work a conspicuous impartiality.
Many a venerable [in his “Annals”] story and cherished tradition were demolished or banished to mythland. Hitherto the field had been the preserve of unconscionable pedants like Ruddiman, who warred with party animosity, and in temper as atrocious as their style, over charters and “claims” and pedigrees. Now this “restorer of Scottish History,” as Sir Walter Scott has called him, lifted research into the domain of history. The “Annals” are dry, deplorably dry; but invaluable still for facts—a quarry in which later writers have dug for material out of which to build more artistic works. In the fine library at New Hailes the judge was busy editing and compiling; composing careful pieces of elegance for the World; translating Church Fathers, with erudite disquisitions dedicated to Anglican bishops; writing a learned answer to Gibbon’s famous Fourteenth Chapter of his “Decline and Fall,” with a learning and ability which are more than respectable. The fastidious accuracy of mind which spoiled Hailes as a lawyer and made him tedious as a judge suited him well as an antiquary.
