Macpherson on Pinkerton: Literary Amenities of the Eighteenth Century

Extract

In the latter part of the eighteenth century one of the most notable scholars and editors in the field of the older Scottish literature was the learned and energetic John Pinkerton, who began to publish his own poetry at the age of eighteen, brought out several volumes of poems and ballads before he was twenty-five, wrote valuable contributions to the history of Scotland, published two collections of old Scottish poetry, as well as editions of Barbour's “Bruce,” etc.,—and then after 1800 went off into entirely new lines in his “Modern Geography,” “General Collection of Voyages and Travels,” “New Modern Atlas,” and even a “Petralogy.”