to see respected.”  Some of Mr Skinner’s best songs were composed at a sitting, while they seldom underwent any revision after being committed to paper.  To the following incident, his most popular song, “Tullochgorum,” owed its origin.  In the course of a visit he was making to a friend in Ellon (not Cullen, as has been stated on the authority of Burns), a dispute arose among the guests on the subject of Whig and Tory politics, which, becoming somewhat too exciting for the comfort of the lady of the house, in order to bring it promptly to a close, she requested Mr Skinner to suggest appropriate words for the favourite air, “The Reel of Tullochgorum.”  Mr Skinner readily complied, and, before leaving the house, produced what Burns, in a letter to the author, characterised as “the best Scotch song ever Scotland saw.”  The name of the lady who made the request to the poet was Mrs Montgomery, and hence the allusion in the first stanza of the ballad:—­

    “Come gie ’s a sang, Montgomery cried,
    And lay your disputes all aside;
    What signifies ’t for folks to chide
        For what was done before them? 
      Let Whig and Tory all agree,” &c.

Though claiming no distinction as a writer of verses, Mr Skinner did not conceal his ambition to excel in another department of literature.  In 1746, in his twenty-fifth year, he published a pamphlet, in defence of the non-juring character of his Church, entitled “A Preservative against Presbytery.”  A performance of greater effort, published in 1757, excited some attention, and the unqualified commendation of the learned Bishop Sherlock.  In this production, entitled “A Dissertation on Jacob’s Prophecy,” which was intended as a supplement to a treatise on the same subject by Dr Sherlock, the author has established, by a critical examination of the original language, that the words in Jacob’s prophecy (Gen. xlix. 10), rendered “sceptre” and “lawgiver” in the authorised version, ought to be translated “tribeship” and “typifier,” a difference of interpretation which obviates some difficulties respecting the exact fulfilment of this remarkable prediction.  In a pamphlet printed in 1767, Mr Skinner again vindicated the claims and authority of his Church; and on this occasion, against the alleged misrepresentations of Mr Norman Sievewright, English clergyman at Brechin, who had published a work unfavourable to the cause of Scottish Episcopacy.  His most important work, “An Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, from the first appearance of Christianity in that kingdom,” was published in the year 1788, in two octavo volumes.  This publication, which is arranged in the form of letters to a friend, and dedicated, in elegant Latin verse, “Ad Filium et Episcopum,” (to his son, and bishop), by partaking too rigidly of a sectarian character, did not attain any measure of success.  Mr Skinner’s other prose works were published after his death, together with a Memoir of the author, under the editorial care