Hepburn, Robert

, a miscellaneous writer, and an imitator of the periodical essays of queen Anne’s reign, was born in Scotland in 1690, and in 1711 began a periodical paper called The Tatler, by Donald Macstaff of the North,“which extended to thirty numbers. They are evidently the production of a man of vigorous native powers, and of a, mind not meanly stored with ancient learning, and familiar with the best writings of the moderns; but they gave much offence, by the description of known characters, and by the personal satire which the author employed, with no gentle or delicate hand, on some men of note, both in the ecclesiastical and civil departments, among his countrymen. Mr. Hepburn, who had studied the civil law in Holland, became a member of the faculty of advocates at Edinburgh in 1712, and died soon after very young. Lord Hailes justly termed him” ingenii praecocis etpraefervidi.“In the concluding paper of his” Tatler“he announced, as then in the press, a translation of sir George Mackenzie’s” Idea eloquentia? Forensis;“and in the Advocates’ library is a small volume containing two treatises of his writing; the one entitled” Demonstratio quod Deus sit,“and the | ether, Dissertatio de Scriptis Pitcarnianis.” The former of these is neatly and methodically written; the latter is somewhat jejune in point of matter, and too lavish of general panegyric. ¹