Born, in Peebles, 10 July 1802. Educated at Burgh and Grammar schools there. Family removed to Edinburgh, Dec. 1813. He followed and went to school there, 1814–15. Taught in Portobello for a time, 1816. Two clerkships for short periods, 1817. Started bookshop in Leith Walk, 1818. Moved to India Place, 1823. Started “The Kaleidoscope” with his brother, 6 Oct. 1821. Edited it till 12 Jan. 1822. Made acquaintance of Scott, and engaged in literary work. Published various works. Married Anne Kirkwood, 7 Dec. 1829. Established “Chambers’s Journal,” with his brother William, 4 Feb. 1832. Started with him publishing firm of W. and R. Chambers, 1833. Fellow of Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, 1840. Received freedom of Peebles, 1841. Moved to St. Andrews, 1841. F.G.S., 1844. Returned to Edinburgh, 1844. Visit to Switzerland, 1848; to Norway, 1849; to Iceland, 1855; to U.S.A., 1860. Settled in London, March 1861. LL.D., St. Andrews, 1861. Elected member of Athenæum Club, 1860. Visit to France and Belgium, 1862. Wife and daughter died, Sept. 1863. Married Mrs. Frith, Jan. 1867; she died, 18 Jan. 1870. Hon. LL.D., St. Andrews, 1868. Died, at St. Andrews, 17 March 1871. Works: “Illustrations of the Author of Waverley,” 1822; “Traditions of Edinburgh” (2 vols.), 1823; “Fires which have occurred in Edinburgh,” 1824; “Walks in Edinburgh,” 1825; “Popular Rhymes of Scotland,” 1826; “Pictures of Scotland” (2 vols.), 1827; “History of the Rebellion in Scotland … 1638 till 1660” (2 vols.), 1828; “History of the Rebellion in Scotland in 1745–46” (2 vols.), 1828; “The Scottish Ballads,” 1829; “The Scottish Songs,” 1829; “History of the Rebellions in Scotland … in 1689 and 1715,” 1829; “Scottish Jests and Anecdotes” [1830?]; “The Life of King James I.” (2 vols.), 1830; “Biographical Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen” (4 vols.), 1832–35; “Gazetteer of Scotland” (with W. Chambers), 1832; “Poems” (privately printed), 1835; “Life of Sir Walter Scott” [1835?]; “History of the English Language and Literature,” 1836; “The Land of Burns” (with Prof. Wilson), 1840; “Popular Rhymes … of Scotland” (anon.), 1842; “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” (anon.), 1844; “Cyclopædia of English Literature” (with R. Carruthers, 2 vols.), 1844; “Romantic Scotch Ballads,” 1844; “Explanation; a sequel to ‘Vestiges, etc.’,” 1845; “Select Writings” (7 vols.), 1847; “Ancient Sea Margins,” 1848; “The History of Scotland,” 1849; “Life and Works of Robert Burns,” 1851; “Tracings of the North of Europe,” 1851; “Tracings in Iceland and the Faroe Islands,” 1856; “Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution” (2 vols.), 1858; “Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Revolution to the Rebellion of 1745,” 1861; “Edinburgh Papers,” pt. I–V., 1859–61; “Songs of Scotland prior to Burns,” 1862; “Book of Days” (2 vols.), 1862–64; “Essays, Familiar and Humorous” (from “Chambers’s Journal”), 1866; “Life of Smollett,” 1867. Posthumous: “The Threiplands of Fingask,” 1880. He edited: Bishop Forbes’ “Jacobite Memoirs of the Rebellion of 1745,” 1834; J. Currie’s “Life of Burns,” 1838; Burns’ “Poetical Works,” 1838, and “Prose Works,” 1839; Sir William Forbes’ “Memoirs of a Banking House,” 1860; and published, with his brother, “Chambers’s Information for the People,” 1835; “Chambers’s Miscellany,” 1869, etc.; “Chambers’s Encyclopædia” (10 vols.), 1859–68; and started “Chambers’s Educational Course,” 1835. Life: “Memoir,” by W. Chambers, 13th edn. 1884.

Personal

  His genial and kindly disposition, to say nothing of his acquirements, gave him many friends. Never had children a more loving father. In public affairs, he was not qualified to take a prominent part. At one time, as has been seen, he edited a newspaper in the old Conservative interest, but his politics were of a mild type; and latterly he was numbered among the friends of social progress within sound constitutional limits. On few things was he more resolute than in upholding the principles of free trade, the opposition to which, particularly as regards the free importation of corn and other elements of food, he considered to be not only a prodigious economic blunder, but a great national crime. His generosity in extending aid to the needy and deserving was a marked trait in his character. His tastes led him to be elected a Fellow of several learned societies, and he was a member of the Athenæum Club. Diligent, accurate, and upright, he entertained clear views on all ordinary concerns; and no one could be more unscrupulous in his denunciation of whatever was narrow, mean, or dishonorable.

  Of Robert Chambers’s friendly, open-armed reception to those who went to Edinburgh and needed introduction to the beauties of this Queen City of North Britain, no terms can be too strong or too high. He placed himself at the disposal of such visitors with the utmost unreserve and the most unwearied kindness; and no man was better fitted to act cicerone by the most interesting among the numerous noteworthy objects there to be seen. He shone to great advantage himself while indicating them; for his talk was intelligent, clear, well-informed, and extremely pleasant. He seemed to enjoy afresh the things he was discussing and displaying for the thousandth time; and to be as much interested in them himself, as he made them doubly and trebly interesting to the person he was guiding.

  Dr. Robert Chambers presented a curious admixture of antiquarian and conservative instincts, and old nonjuring sympathies, with an extreme liberalism in thought on all educational or scientific questions of his own day, which often gave occasion for friendly banter in the lighter moods of social intercourse. But he was himself very tender in regard to the feelings of others; and had all the sensitiveness of a singularly gentle and loving nature, which made his friends careful not to push their banter to an extreme. With his keen Jacobite sentiment, and his no less ardent sympathy with all modern progress; his archaic veneration, and the bold scientific radicalism which won for him, rightly or not, the repute of author of the “Vestiges of Creation;” there was a rare compass in the genial sympathy of the man. Whatever interested his friends could not fail for the time being to command his interest.

  His manner was dry, and though his eye twinkled with humor, I did not immediately recognize it as such. It was, in fact, the first acquaintance that I had made with a man of his type, and he puzzled me…. Robert Chambers’s humor was of the good-natured sort. His nature was essentially “good;” from the pleasure he took in the popularity of his friends, I used to call him “the Well-Wisher;” nor did he confine himself, as so many benevolent folks do, to wishing. I was intimately connected with him for twenty years, every one of which increased my regard for him, and when he died I lost one of the truest friends I ever had. His manner, however, on first acquaintance, was somewhat solid and unsympathetic. He had a very striking face and figure, as well known in Edinburgh as St. Giles’ Cathedral, but a stranger would have taken him for a divine, possibly even for one of the “unco’ guid.” In London his white tie and grave demeanor caused him to be always taken for a clergyman—a very great mistake—which used to tickle him exceedingly…. He could appreciate a joke even upon a subject so sacred as the “Journal” itself.

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, 1844

  A book which has been reprinted here, and read, perhaps, quite as much as it has in England. I read it through at once, in the beautiful copy you sent me, and enjoyed the transparent style in which it is written, and the boldness of its philosophical generalization, very much. But I have no faith in the conclusion to which it comes, because almost every step in the argument is set upon some not sure theory, and the whole consists of a series of nicely fitted links, in which “ten, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.” If the author fails in a single instance,—even in the poor matter of the Mac Lac speculations at the end,—the whole system explodes, just as a Prince Rupert’s drop does when you break off its tail.

  I now know the “Vestiges” well, and I detest the book for its shallowness, for the intense vulgarity of its philosophy, for its gross, unblushing materialism, for its silly credulity in catering out of every fool’s dish, for its utter ignorance of what is meant by induction, for its gross (and I dare to say filthy) views of physiology—most ignorant and most false—and for its shameful shuffling of the facts of geology so as to make them play a rogue’s game. I believe some woman is the author, partly from the fair dress and agreeable exterior of the “Vestiges,” and partly from the utter ignorance the book displays of all sound physical logic. A man who knew so much of the surface of physics must, at least on some one point or other, have taken a deeper plunge; but all parts of the book are shallow…. From the bottom of my soul I loathe and detest the “Vestiges.” ’Tis a rank pill of asafœtida and arsenic covered with gold-leaf.

  No notice of the works of Robert Chambers would be considered complete without some mention of a philosophical work, published anonymously, which created a great stir in the world of thought. This was the “Vestiges of Creation.” The controversy which this remarkable book, the matrix of Darwin’s, engendered, was most envenomed, and when in 1848 Mr. Chambers was selected to be Lord Provost of Edinburgh, he thought it expedient to withdraw in the face of a storm raised against him as the supposed author. There were good reasons why he should not admit the authorship. Had he done so, the religious bodies of Scotland and England would have risen against the firm, and the numerous educational works of the Brothers Chambers would have been driven from the schools. For business reasons, rather than from any other cause, the author chose not to father a book which must certainly be regarded as one of the greatest speculative works of the nineteenth century. Should it be proved that Robert Chambers wrote it, his title to fame will be materially strengthened, for the writer of that book was the forerunner of Darwin.

  This work, which drew down upon its at first unknown author a perfect avalanche of ecclesiastical censure, was perhaps the boldest and most outspoken account of the origin of nature, as we know it, that had yet been published, but it substantially advanced little that was especially new. The most risky speculations of the author had been adventured already in each separate department of science. What Chambers was left to do was to make, as he himself says, “the first attempt to connect the natural sciences into a history of creation.” The “Vestiges” dealt successively with the formation of the solar system, that of the earth itself with all its successive formations and the kinds of life to be found in each, the origin of all animated tribes and the early history of mankind. The book was undoubtedly conceived in a reverent spirit; it professed to give a wider and nobler view of the Creator’s work than that which was ordinarily accepted. But the writer evidently knew, if only by the elaborate precautions that he took to conceal the authorship, that it would raise a storm of criticism. Indeed, to those who regarded the Mosaic account of the creation as the authoritative description revealed by God Himself of the various steps of the process, there was something peculiarly offensive in the manner in which the writer appeared to assume the part of one who was in the Creator’s confidence.

  A remarkably advanced scientific book appeared in the year 1844, entitled “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.” It was published anonymously, and for forty years the secret of its authorship was unknown. The book was variously ascribed to Thackeray, Lady Lovelace, Sir Charles Lyell, George Combe, Sir Richard Vyvyan, and even Prince Albert, but one of the depositories of the secret, Mr. Alexander Ireland, in a lecture delivered before the Manchester Literary Club in April 1884, stated that it was entirely from the pen of Robert Chambers. The most extraordinary precautions had been taken to preserve the anonymity of the author, who states in one of his letters: “To escape strife at the expense of losing any honour which may arise from my work is to me a most advantageous exchange.”

  Nothing he did was quite equal to the “Vestiges,” a book rather literary than scientific, and treating the still crude evolution theory rather from the point of view of popular philosophy than from that of strict biological investigation; but curiously stimulating and enthusiastic, with a touch of poetry in it not often to be found in such books, and attractive as showing the way in which doctrines which are about to take a strong hold of the general mind not infrequently communicate themselves, in an unfinished but inspiring form, to persons who, except general literary culture and interest, do not seem to offer any specially favourable soil for their germination. Purely scientific men have usually rather pooh-poohed the “Vestiges,” but there is the Platonic quality in it.

  The “Vestiges of Creation” has been unduly appreciated since the time of Darwin. The gaps in the argument, and still more perhaps the untenable assumptions and mistaken assertions, are easy to detect now; but it is at least ungracious to insist upon them. Chambers was not an accomplished naturalist; on the contrary, Huxley charges him with “prodigious ignorance.” He had not laboured as long, as patiently or as strenuously at the subject as Darwin; but at the same time his book is in an uncommon degree bold and suggestive.

Cyclopædia of English Literature, 1844

  A publication of higher rank than any previous compilation of a similar character. Not less than a quarter of a million of copies of this excellent introduction to the British Classics have been sold in Great Britain and the United States.

  The work was a great success, and over 130,000 copies of it were sold in a few years. Careful revision of later editions has kept it abreast of the times, and though several works on English literature may be mentioned of greater brilliance of style and depth of criticism, it is, on the whole, the most useful companion the student can have.

General

  Would be admirable [“Beauties of Scotland”] if they were accurate. He is a clever young fellow, but hurts himself by too much haste.

  There are few literary men of the time who have exercised a more extensive or a more beneficial influence on their fellow-men, and who better deserve to be held in grateful remembrance by the people of Scotland and all other English-speaking portions of the globe, than ROBERT CHAMBERS. He was not a writer of first-rate genius, but in the course of an industrious literary career of twoscore and ten years he accomplished a vast amount of useful work. His name will occupy an honorable place in the royal guild of letters in connection with the introduction of cheap, instructive and unobjectionable popular literature.

  Altogether, as nearly as can be reckoned my brother produced upwards of seventy volumes, exclusive of detached papers which it would be impossible to enumerate. His whole writings had for their aim the good of society, the advancement in some shape or other of the true and beautiful. It will hardly be thought that I exceed the proper bounds of panegyric in stating, that in the long list of literary compositions of Robert Chambers, we see the zealous and successful student, the sagacious and benevolent citizen, and the devoted lover of his country.

  Few men have worked so hard as Robert Chambers; his life, busy in its threefold capacity of author, editor, and publisher, can scarcely have known an unprofitable hour; few men have worked so well, for not a line that he has written, not a book that he has published, but has tended in some way to the education and social improvement of the people; and few men have reaped such an honourable and profitable reward for their labours.

  Until the fourteenth number of the Journal, Robert Chambers was only in the position of a contributor. After that, he became associated with his brother as joint editor, and also became his partner in the business. There can be little doubt that it was to the numerous original contributions from his pen that the Journal owed a great part of its success. Though his essays cannot be said to display any great ability or originality, they are very fair specimens of a kind of writing where excellence is rarely even approached. “During fifteen years,” he says in the preface to a collection of his essays, “I have laboured in this field, alternately gay, grave, sentimental, philosophical, until not much fewer than 400 separate papers have proceeded from my pen.” The papers, he goes on to say, were written under some difficulties, particularly those of a provincial situation, and a life too studious and recluse to afford much opportunity for the observation of social characteristics. This, however, was partly compensated for by the fact that it made his treatment of subjects less local and less liable to accidents of fashion than it might otherwise have been.

  His “Book of Days,” a work upon which great labour was spent, was in course of issue from 1860 to 1867. Some help that was anticipated failed him, and the strain of labour was too great. While engaged in the work, he lost his wife, also a daughter. “The Book of Days” was a success, but he himself spoke of it as his death blow. He went for health to St. Andrews, was made LL.D. by the University there, and known as “the Doctor;” but vigour of life was gone. In the course of his life he had produced, says his brother, upwards of seventy volumes, besides detached papers which could hardly be counted. So it is that our strong men now fight with the dragons.

  I know no man who did so much literary work of such various kinds, and upon the whole so well, as Robert Chambers. There is now no doubt—indeed it was always an open secret—that he wrote the famous “Vestiges,” though, until the late disclosure of Mr. Ireland, I had conjectured from the style that the book might have been written in collaboration. His scientific and antiquarian works were numerous; his essays of themselves fill many volumes, and admirably reflect his character—humor mixed with common-sense.

  As a writer Chambers is vigorous, instructive, and interesting. He knew a great deal of men and books, and in communicating his knowledge he remembered his own precept, that dullness is “the last of literary sins.” Thus he was well fitted to be a popular expounder of science and history. Occasional touches of humour give his writing additional interest. In treating, as he frequently did, of subjects illustrating Scottish character, he used the Scottish dialect with singular force and effect.

  Most industrious in the interviewing of everybody with even a remote acquaintance with the poet, and in the chronicling of tradition and report, he aimed, above all, at the production of a book which should do credit to his Instructive and Entertaining Library. His “Burns” has therefore the defects of its qualities. It contains much that was new, and is true; but it is overloaded with detail, in which hearsay too often does duty for fact. It is worth noting, too, that while Chambers—(who did not hesitate to suppress or even change, in the interests of decorum)—took credit for a faithfully zealous “attempt” to “place the writings of Burns before the world” with “fidelity as to text,” he in the same breath declared that “here there is little room for amendment.” The natural consequence of such fundamental nescience was that, instead of appreciably improving the text, he added to it his own peculiar quota of corruptions. Several new pieces were included by him, but little or no definite information was given as to how or where they were got.

  Robert Chambers stands by himself. He was of the best class of self-made men, and as a publisher perhaps even more than as a writer did service to literature.