Born in 1711, died in 1776; educated at Edinburgh; lived in France from 1734 to 1737; accompanied Gen. St. Clair on an embassy to Vienna and Turin as judge-advocate; appointed keeper of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh in 1752; visited France again in 1763; Under-secretary of State in 1767; published his treatise on "Human Nature" in 1739; his "Essays" in 1741; his "Human Understanding" in 1748; his "History of England" in 1754-61.