PINKERTON, Joust, an industrious and learned litteratevr, was born at Edinburgh, Feb: 17, 1758, and educated at the grammar-school of Lanark, where he was noted for the unusual excellence of his classical attainments, and for his hypochondriacal tendency. He was afterward apprenticed to a writer to the signet, his father refusing to let him pro ceed to the university; and-While engaged in the irksome and distasteful practice of law, he published an Ode to Craigmillar Castle, in 1776, which he dedicated to Dr. Beattie. In 1780 he went to London, where he settled as a man of letters. Next year he gave to the public a volume of Rimes (as be called his pieces), and a collection of Scottish nag%c Ballads, followed in 1783 by a second collection of Ballads of the Comic Kiwl—both of which subsequently appeared under the title of Select Scottish Ballads. They professed to be ancient, but many of them were really compositions—forgeries, some might say, of Pinkerton's own, and would hardly deceive a critical archmologist. In 1S74 he published .an Essay on Medals, which went through several editions, and long held a high place among books on numismatics; and in 1785 Letters on Literature, marked chiefly by a novel system of orthography (e.g„ the use of a instead of s in forming plurals), intended to soften the harshness of the English language, and which was abused as heartily as it deserved. These Letters were, however, the means of introducing him to Walpole, through whom he became acquainted with Gibbon and other literary celebrities. Pinker ton's next publication was a most valuable one, Ancient Scottish Poems ?lever &fore in. Print, from the MS. Collections of Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, Knight (2, vols. Lond. 1786). It was followed in 1787 by his once notable Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of the Scythions or Goths, in which, for the first time, appears that grotesquely virulent hatred of the Britanno-Celtic race—Scotch Highlanders, Welsh, and Irish—that reaches its climax in his Inquiry into the Ilistory of Scotland preceding the Reign of Mal colm III. (2 vols. Lond. 1790), where he affirms again and again, obviously with the
,extremest gusto, that the Highlanders are "mere savages, but one degree above brutes;" That they are just as they were "in the days of Julius Caesar;" that "like Indians and iearoes, ' they " will ever continue absolute savages," and that "all we can do is to plant ,colonies among them, and by this, and encouraging their emigration, try to get rid of But in spite of this extravagant truculence of speech, the Inquiry contains a great deal of important matter—rare and curious historical docutnents,•some of which are to be found nowhere else in print. Pinkerton left England in 1802, and fixed his resi dence at Paris, where lie died Mar. 10, 1820, after a life of hard literary work. His principal publications, besides those already mentioned, are The ,Medallic History of Eng kind to the Revolution (1790); Scottish Poems (3 vols. 1792), reprinted front scarce editions; Inconographia Scotica, or Portraits of filustrions Persons of Scotland, with Biographical Notes (2 vols. 1795-97); The History of Scotland from the Accession of the House of Stuart to that of Mary (2 vols. 1797), valuable for its laborious investigation of original materials, but disfigured, in a literary point of view, by an imitation of the grandiose style of Gib bon; Witipolian.a, a collection of his notes of his friend _Horace Walpole's conversation, in 2 vols. ; The Scottish Gallery, or Portraits of Eminent Persons of Scotland, with their Characters (1799); Modern Geography (3 vols. 1802-7); General Collection of Voyages and Travels (16 vols. 180-13); New Modern Atlas (1809-15); and Petrology, or a Treatise on Rocks (2 vols. 1811).