His manners were polished, and his literary and scientific attainments respectable.

He was a linguist, mathematician, and a poet.

It is true that his hymns, odes, ballads, and Hudibrastic satires are of very little intrinsic value; but, when it is considered that he was a mere boy when most of them were written, it must be admitted that they show considerable vigour of mind.

He was now at Edinburgh: his influence among the West Country Whigs assembled there was great: he hated Dundee with deadly hatred, and was believed to be meditating some act of violence, [294] On the fifteenth of March Dundee received information that some of the Covenanters had bound themselves together to slay him and Sir George Mackenzie, whose eloquence and learning, long prostituted to the service of tyranny, had made him more odious to the Presbyterians than any other man of the gown.

Dundee applied to Hamilton for protection, and Hamilton advised him to bring the matter under the consideration of the Convention at the next sitting, [295] Before that sitting, a person named Crane arrived from France, with a letter addressed by the fugitive King to the Estates.