William Robertson

“ A natural feeling of anxiety oppressed the mind of William as he recalled the events of his early manhood, and remembered the consequences of his former war with England. His kingdom was still unsettled, his health was beginning to fail, whilst his heir was still a mere child, and Scotland had hardly yet recovered from the disastrous state of anarchy into which she had been plunged by the capture of her king at Alnwick. ”

“ His son, Thomas William Shafto Robertson, a manager and an actor, died 24 May 1895, aged 37. Other members of his family joined the theatrical profession.
Robertson may be credited with the foundation of a school the influence of which survives and is felt. His theory of comedy-writing was to place, amid worldly and cynical surroundings, a tender, youthful, and sentimental interest, which would show the brighter for its entourage. ”

“ Not a papal legate was allowed to enter Scotland who had not first sworn to do nothing detrimental to the interests of the English king, with an additional [376] promise to return through England—a proviso that precluded the possibility of evasion—whilst a similar pledge was exacted from all the Scottish clergy who attended the eleventh Council at the Lateran. William was continually summoned to attend, as a vassal, at the Court of his English lord; and he brought his earls and barons, when required, to assist at the councils of their common superior. ”

“ Whilst the elder king was occupied in strengthening his defences upon the frontiers of France and in securing the important services of twenty thousand Reiters of Brabant, the younger Henry was busily corrupting the unfaithful adherents of his father, and lavishing grants upon the allies whose assistance he wished to purchase. The promise of Northumberland to William, and the offer of the fief of Cambridge to his brother, the Earl of Huntingdon, secured the active co-operation of both the Scottish princes ”

“ With the Bishop of Durham and the Sheriff of Northumberland were associated the Earl of Hereford and the Lords de Vesci and de Ros, the nephew and sons-in-law of William, who, with the Earls of Huntingdon and Norfolk, and a brilliant retinue of other barons, awaited the arrival of the Scottish king on the frontiers, and conducted him, with every mark of respect, to the place of meeting. Here, upon a neighbouring hill, which was at that time without the city of Lincoln, William performed homage to John “for his right saving his own right;” ”

“ The majority of the barons and thanes of Ross, and other portions of Moravia, had by this time ranged themselves beneath his banner; [442] whilst the connection of the lords of Argyle, and the Isles, with the family of Malcolm Mac Heth, must have disposed the leading nobles of the Western Highlands to display a very lukewarm adherence to the royal cause. With the greater part of the north and west either openly, or secretly, in his favour, Mac William could also calculate upon the support of many other leading men, who had been parties to his first establishment in the country ”

“ A rupture, however, had almost occurred through the contemplated erection of a castle at the mouth of the Tweed, for the purpose of commanding the Scottish burgh of Berwick, with its important fortress; thus endangering the prosperity of the foremost [419] commercial town in Scotland, and neutralizing the cession of one of the keys of the Lothians, restored by the charter of Cœur de Lion. It was impossible for William to overlook so dangerous an encroachment, and whenever the English attempted to begin the building, the Scots drove them away by force, levelling their work with the ground ”

“ His style was dry and unadorned, but the original and suggestive quality of his researches rendered the loss to historical science far greater than the amount of his published work might seem to indicate. By his marriage, on 11 June 1838, to Isabella, youngest daughter of William Manby Colegrave of Bracebridge Hall, Robertson left a son, Francis William (1849–1882) , and two daughters. ”

“ In 1891 Robertson succeeded John Inglis [q. v.] as lord president of the Court of Session, and in 1899, on the death of William Watson, Baron Watson [q. v. Suppl. I] , he became a life peer, as Baron Robertson of Forteviot (14 Nov.) , with a seat on the judicial committee of the privy council. He was elected an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple (24 Nov. 1899-18 Jan. 1900) . As a judge in Scotland, Robertson had often shown that he found his position there uncongenial ”

“ Some allowance may be made for his anxiety to carry out the policy of his grandfather, and re-annex to the Scottish crown the appanage of his early years, which his brother had resigned at Chester; but from the comparative ease with which his successor crushed [435] every rebellion within a few years of his accession, firmly established the royal authority over the whole mainland of Scotland, and vindicated on every occasion the liberties of his crown and kingdom, it is very evident that William carried his caution too far ”

“ They were uneasy, also, about the fidelity of a certain portion of the royal army, who were quite as well inclined to favour Mac William as to support the cause of the king; and, acquiescing at length in the prudence of their advice, William consented to remain at Inverness, and to entrust the immediate conduct of the war to leaders upon whose ability and fidelity he could depend. ”

“ Lastly, Robertson, after making the emperor perform in his shroud, lays him in his coffin, where, after joining in the prayers for the rest of his own soul, not yet departed, he is left by the monks to his meditations!—Where Robertson got all these particulars it would not be easy to tell; certainly not from the authorities cited at the bottom of his page.
[328] "Et j'assure que le cœur nous fendait de voir qu'un homme voulût en quelque sorte s'enterrer vivant, et faire ses obsèques avant de mourir." Gachard, Retraite et Mort, tom. ”

“ In Salisbury's second administration he became again solicitor-general for Scotland.
Robertson made his mark in the House of Commons at once. On 13 April 1887 he spoke with effect in support of the criminal law amendment (Ireland) bill. His speech, a defence of the bill on the analogy of the Scottish criminal law, was published under the title of 'Scotland and the Crimes Bill.' In 1889 he was appointed lord advocate, succeeding John Hay Athole Macdonald, who was made lord justice clerk, and he was sworn of the privy council. ”

“ When you have penetrated far, far back, by successive approximations, and still see the illimitable distance receding before you as distant as before, imagination absolutely gives way, and you feel dizzy and bewildered with new strange thoughts, that have not a name. ”

“ Those graves that lie beneath you, holding in them the infinite secret, and stamping upon all earthly loveliness the mark of frailty and change and fleetingness—are those graves the prospect to which in bright days and dark days you can turn without dismay? ”

“ There has passed away a glory from the earth—the stars, the sun, the moon, the green fields have lost their beauty and significance—nothing remains as it was, except their repeated impressions on the mind, the impressions of time, space, eternity, colour, form ”

“ We congratulate ourselves that the days of persecution are gone by; but persecution is that which affixes penalties upon views held, instead of upon life led. Is persecution only fire and sword? But suppose a man of sensitive feeling says, The sword is less sharp to me than the slander: fire is less intolerable than the refusal of sympathy! ”

“ To escape from monotony, to get away from the life of mere routine and habits, to feel that we are alive—with more of surprise and wakefulness in our existence. To have less of the gelid, torpid, tortoise-like existence. ”

“ When man fell, the world fell with him. All creation received a shock. Thorns, briars, and thistles, sprang up. They were there before, but to the now restless and impatient hands of men they became obstacles and weeds. Death, which must ever have existed as a form of dissolution, a passing from one state to another, became a curse; the sting of death was sin—unchanged in itself, it changed in man. ”

“ Fulness of the Spirit calms; fulness produced by excitement satiates and exhausts. They who know the world of fashion tell us that the tone adopted there is, either to be, or to affect to be, sated with enjoyment, to be proof against surprise, to have lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have all keenness of wonder gone. That which ought to be men's shame becomes their boast—unsusceptibility of any fresh emotion. ”

“ Law! law! there is nothing like law—a salutary fear—for making men holy. O blind Pharisee! had you ever known the spring, the life which comes from feeling free, the gush of gratitude with which the heart springs to duty when all chains are shattered, and it stands fearless and free in the Light, and in the Love of God—you would understand that a large trusting charity, which can throw itself on the better and more generous impulses of a laden spirit, is the safest as well as the most beautiful means of securing obedience. ”

“ And to say the truth, brethren, it is a rhetorical expression rather than a sober truth when we call anything, except the resurrection, victory over death. We may conquer doubt and fear when we are dying, but that is not conquering death. It is like a warrior crushed to death by a superior antagonist refusing to yield a groan, and bearing the glance of defiance to the last. You feel that he is an unconquerable spirit, but he is not the conqueror. ”

“ If we could conceive an unselfish man looking upon this world of desolation with that infinite compassion which all the brave and good feel, what conception could he have but that of defeat, and failure, and sadness—the sons of man mounting into a bright existence, and one after another falling back into darkness and nothingness, like soldiers trying to mount an impracticable breach, and falling back crushed and mangled into the ditch before the bayonets and the rattling fire of their conquerors. ”

“ There is a world of untold sensations crowded into that moment, when a man puts his hand to his forehead and feels the damp upon it which tells him his hour is come. He has been waiting for death all his life, and now it is come. It is all over—his chance is past, and his eternity is settled. None of us know, except by guess, what that sensation is. Myriads of human beings have felt it to whom life was dear; but they never spoke out their feelings, for such things are untold. And to every individual man throughout all eternity that sensation in its fulness can come but once. ”

“ And it is in such a moment, when a man stands upon a deck, taking his last look of his fatherland, that there comes upon him a sensation new, strange, and inexpressibly miserable—the feeling of being alone in the world. ”

“ You have restricted God's love, and narrowed the path to heaven; you have hampered religion with so many mysterious questions and quibbles that I cannot find the way to God; you have terrified me with so many snares and pitfalls on every side, that I dare not tread at all. Give me peace; give me human guidance: I want a human arm to lean on. ”

“ Have we not heard how, even in this century in which we live, the various and conflicting feelings of the people of this country were concentrated into one, when the threat of foreign invasion had fused down and broken the edges of conflict and variance, and from shore to shore was heard one cry of terrible defiance, and the different classes and orders of this manifold and mighty England were as one? Have we not heard how the mighty winds hold together, as if one, the various atoms of the desert, so that they rush like a living thing, across the wilderness? ”

“ In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and night into restless misery. ”

“ When we pass from the tame and narrow scenery of our own country, and stand on those spots of earth in which nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, we are conscious of something of the grandeur which belongs to the thought of space. Go where the strong foundations of the earth lie around you in their massive majesty, and mountain after mountain rears its snow to heaven in a giant chain, and then, when this bursts upon you for the first time in life, there is that peculiar feeling which we call, in common language, an enlargement of ideas. ”

“ Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defence, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. ”

“ Beware of every approach of this!—Beware of that spirit which controversy fosters, of watching only for the evil in the character of an antagonist!—Beware of that habit which becomes the slanderer's life, of magnifying every speck of evil and closing the eye to goodness!—till at last men arrive at the state in which generous, universal love (which is heaven) becomes impossible, and a suspicious, universal hate takes possession of the heart, and that is hell! ”

“ Love is the only remedy for slander: no set of rules or restrictions can stop it; we may denounce, but we shall denounce in vain. The radical cure of it is Charity—“out of a pure heart and faith unfeigned,” to feel what is great in the human character; to recognise with delight all high, and generous, and beautiful actions; to find a joy even in seeing the good qualities of your bitterest opponents, and to admire those qualities even in those with whom you have least sympathy—be it either the Romanist or the Unitarian—this is the only spirit which can heal the love of slander and of calumny. ”