Il ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND

His conftitution during infancy was infirm andfickly, and required all the tender solicitude of hissurviving parent. She was blamed for treating himwith an unlimited indulgence ; but it producedno unfavorable effects on his temper or his difpo-fitions: — and he enjoyed the rare fatisfaftion ofbeing able to repay her affe£iion, by every atten-tion that filial gratitude could dictate, during thelong period of sixty years.

An accident which happened to him when hewas about three years old, is of too interefting anature to be omitted in the account of fo valuablea life. He had been carried by his mother to Stra-thenry on a vifit to his uncle Mr. Douglas , andwas one day amufing himfelf alone at the door ofthe house, when he was llolen by a party of thatfet of vagrants who are known in Scotland by thename of tinkers. Luckily he was soon miffed byhis uncle, who hearing that some vagrants hadpalled, pursued them, with what afliftance hecould find, till he overtook them in Leflie wood;and was the happy infiniment of preserving to theworld a genius, which was deftined, not only to

he was appointed comptroller of the cuftoms atKirkaldy. He wasalfo clerk to the courts martial anil councils of war for Scotland ;an office which he held from 1707 till his death. As it is nowseventy years since he died, the accounts I have received of himare very imperfeft ; but from the particulars already mentioned ,it may be presumed, that he was a man of more than common,abilities.