Benjamin Constant

(sharon) #1

  1. Courtney (1967; 1), p. 100.

  2. Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sir Lesley Stephen, London: Smith, Elder,
    1908, vol. VI, p. 163. See also Courtney (1992) on Duncan and other Edinburgh
    ‘characters’.

  3. Richard Kentish is dealt with later in Chapter 4, ‘Escape’, in connection with
    Constant’s escapade d’Angleterre of 1787.

  4. Constant does not mention Charles Hope in Ma Vie. Prominent in the Speculative
    Society’s debates in 1783–5, Hope went on to become Lord Advocate of Scotland in
    1801, MP for the City of Edinburgh and a Privy Councillor. His eloquence as a
    judge was considered outstanding.

  5. Another survivor from the eighteenth century is the Royal Medical Society, still
    active in the University, to which Richard Kentish was admitted on 30 November
    1782, and which several members of the Speculative Society also joined: Thomas
    Addis Emmet, Thomas Skeete, James Mackintosh and John Ffrye (General List of
    the Members of the Medical Society of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1877, pp. 19–21).

  6. Minutes of the Speculative Society, p. 274, kept in the archives of the Speculative
    Society (henceforth: Minutes, followed by page number).

  7. Minutes, p. 277.

  8. See Sir Alexander Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh, 2 vols, London:
    Longman’s, Green, 1884, vol. II, pp. 486–9.

  9. HSSE, p. 167. Thomas Macknight, in a manuscript memoir kept in the archives of
    the Speculative Society, remarks that he was ‘a Russian of no great distinction’
    (Biographical Letters III A-Z, Drafts of History 1845, f. 157 verso. Henceforth:
    Macknight, followed by folio number).

  10. Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, p. 9.

  11. Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, ed. Robert
    James Mackintosh, London: Edward Moxon, 1835, 2 vols, vol. I, pp. 26–7
    (henceforth: Memoirs, followed by volume and page numbers).

  12. Memoirs, vol. I, pp. 29–30.

  13. Memoirs, vol. I, p. 24.

  14. Memoirs, vol. I, p. 24.

  15. It was in these terms that the Society’s aims were described when a proposal was
    made to establish a connection with the Historical Society of Trinity College, Dublin
    on 18 November 1783 (Minutes, p. 278).

  16. Wood (1986), pp. 152–3 and 155.

  17. Memoirs, vol. I, p. 20.

  18. See Memoirs, vol. II, passim.

  19. Memoirs, vol. I, p. 25.

  20. Memoirs, vol. II, pp. 271–2.

  21. Memoirs, vol. I, p. 28.

  22. Minutes, p. 284.

  23. Wood (1986), p. 162.

  24. Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, p. 9.


List of abbreviations 274
Free download pdf