Robertson, WILLIAM, the historian, was born 19th September 1721, at Borthwick in Midlothian, of which parish his father was minister. He went to school at Dalkeith, at twelve entered the university of Edinburgh, and at twenty-two was ordained as minister of Gladsmuir. On the sudden death of his father and mother soon after, the care of a younger brother and six sisters devolved upon him, and this duty he at once cheerfully undertook, although his income was but £100 a year. At the same time he was assiduous in preaching, in catechising, and in all the duties of his office. His vigour and patriotism he showed by joining a body of volunteers formed for the defence of Edinburgh against the Jacobite rebels in 1745, and after the surrender of the city he offered his services to the royalist commander at Haddington. As early as 1751 we find Robertson taking a prominent part in the debates of the General Assembly, and indeed his influence soon became supreme as leader of the 'Moderate' party in the church. He carried the deposition of Gillespie in the Assembly in 1752, and in 1757 the acquittal of Carlyle of Inveresk before the Synod for having been present at the performance of Home's tragedy of Douglas on the Edinburgh stage. From 1759 till his death he was joint-minister with Dr Erskine of Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh, and in the same year he was appointed chaplain of Stirling Castle. Still further, in 1761 he became a royal chaplain, in 1762 principal of the university of Edinburgh, and in 1764 the office of king's historiographer was revived in his favour, with a salary of £200 a year. Tempting offers of golden preferment in the English church were held out to him, but these he was too sensible and honest to accept. All this was because of the splendid and immediate success of his History of Scotland (1753-59), which earned the warmest praises from Hume, Horace Walpole, Lord Chesterfield, Bishop Warburton, David Garrick, and Baron d'Holbach, if not Dr Johnson—'Sir, I love Robertson; and I won't talk of his book,' said the doctor to Boswell. Next followed the History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. (3 vols. 1769), to which was prefixed an admirably synthetic and suggestive View of the State of Society in Europe from the subversion of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century. This is the most valuable of Robertson's works. The field has been often since traversed by authors who have discovered much new material, but all the use they have made of it has become an indirect tribute to the natural sagacity of Robertson. He received £4500 for the copyright, and was gratified by the most flattering praises from Voltaire and Gibbon. The History of America appeared in 1777; An Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India in 1791. Robertson died near Edinburgh, 11th June 1793, and was buried in the Greyfriars churchyard.
Robertson's Histories are still excellent reading, although in every case they have been left behind by the more valuable works of a later day. Their merit is great, considering the slenderness of the materials then available and the fact that he lived almost half a century before the modern conception of the scope and method of history awoke. None of his contemporaries philosophised on defective data with greater dignity or less unconsciousness of 18th-century limitations; but it is true that many of the remarks in his review of the state of Europe display a quite remarkable sagacity and power of generalisation. His style is clear and correct, but is formal, and lacks idiomatic vigour and spontaneity.
See the short account of his life by Dugald Stewart; Carlyle's Autobiography; Brougham (a grand-nephew, who, a boy of fifteen, had stood beside the historian's grave), Lives of Men of Letters of the Time of George III.; and Lord Cockburn's Memorials of his Life and Times, for an interesting sketch of his appearance and conversation in his last years.