George Chalmers - Mature Works (1786-1824)

Mature Works (1786-1824)

Besides biographical sketches of Defoe, Sir John Davies, Allan Ramsay, Sir David Lyndsay, Churchyard and others, prefixed to editions of their respective works, the British government paid Chalmers 500 pounds sterling to write a hostile biography of Thomas Paine, the author of the Rights of Man, that Chalmers published under the assumed name of Francis Oldys, A.M., of the University of Pennsylvania; and a life of Ruddiman, in which considerable light is thrown on the state of literature in Scotland during the earlier part of the last century. His life of Mary, Queen of Scots, was first published in 1818. It is founded on a manuscript left by John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester; but Chalmers found it necessary to rewrite the whole. Mary's history occupied much of his attention, and his last work, A Detection of the Love Letters lately attributed in Hugh Campbell's work to Mary Queen of Scots, is an exposure of an attempt to represent as genuine some fictitious letters said to have passed between Mary and Bothwell.

His Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers which were exhibited in Norfolk Street, appeared in 1797, followed by other tracts on the same subject. These contributions to the literature of Shakespeare seek to show that papers which had been proved forgeries might nevertheless have been genuine. Chalmers also took part in the controversy on the identity of Junius, and in The Author of Junius Ascertained, from a Concatenation of Circumstances amounting to Moral Demonstration (1817) sought to fix the authorship of the Junius letters on Hugh Boyd. In 1824 he published The Poetical Remains of some of the Scottish Kings, now first collected; and in the same year he edited and presented as a contribution to the Bannatyne Club Robene and Makyne and the Testament of Cresseid, by Robert Henryson.

His political writings are equally numerous. Among them may be mentioned Collection of Treaties between Great Britain and other Powers (1790); Vindication of the Privileges of the People in respect to the Constitutional Right of Free Discussion, etc. (1796), published anonymously; A Chronological Account of Commerce and Coinage in Great Britain from the Restoration till 1850 (1810); Opinions of Eminent Lawyers on various points of English Jurisprudence, chiefly concerning the Colonies, Fisheries, and Commerce of Great Britain (1814); Comparative Views of the State of Great Britain before and since the War (1817).

He had also been engaged on a history of Scottish poetry and a history of printing in Scotland. Each of them he thought likely to extend to two large quarto volumes, and on both he expended an unusual amount of enthusiasm and energy. He had also prepared for the press an elaborate history of the life and reign of David I. In his later researches he was assisted by his nephew James, son of Alexander Chalmers, writer in Elgin.