"This work," he says, "forms a grand epoch in our antiquities, and was the first that led the way to rational criticism on them: his industry, coolness, judgment, and general accuracy, recommend him as the best antiquary that Scotland has yet produced."[1] While concurring, however, in any praise which we observe to have been elicited by this too much neglected work, we must remark, that it is blemished by a portion of it being evidently prepared with the political view of supporting the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which Innes as a Jacobite probably respected, and as an adherent of the exiled house, felt himself called on to support.[2] He is probably right in presuming that Buchanan knew well the falsehood of many of the facts he stated, but it was as unnecessary that he should answer the arguments which Buchanan, in the separate treatise, "De Jure Regni apud Scotos," may have been presumed to have derived from such facts, as it was for Buchanan to erect so great a mass of fable; while the dissertation he has given us on the fruitful subject of the conduct of queen Mary, is somewhat of an excrescence in a dissertation on the early inhabitants of Scotland.
The political bias of this portion of the work is avowed in the preface, where the author observes that the statements of Buchanan, "far from doing any real honour to our country, or contributing, as all historical accounts ought to do, to the benefit of posterity, and to the mutual happiness of king and people, do rather bring a reproach upon the country, and furnish a handle to turbulent spirits, to disturb the quiet and peace, and by consequence the happiness of the inhabitants;"[3] yet even this subject is handled with so much calmness that it may rather be termed a defect, than a fault.
Besides the great work which he wrote, Innes is supposed to have been the compiler of a book of considerable interest and importance. It is pretty well known that a manuscript of the life of king James II., written by himself, existed for some time in the Scots college of Paris, where it was carefully concealed from observation. This valuable work is believed, on too certain grounds, to have been reduced to ashes during the French Revolution; but an abstract of it, which was discovered in Italy, was published by Mr Stanyers Clarke in 1806, and is supposed by well informed persons to have been the work of father Innes. We have been enabled to trace this supposition to no better source than a presumption from the circumstances in which Innes was placed, and to the absence of any other name which can reasonably be assigned. There is, indeed, a document extant, which might afford ground for a contrary supposition. In 1740, Carte, the historian, received an order from James Edgar, secretary to the Pretender, addressed to the Messrs Innes, permitting him to inspect the life writ by Mr Dicconson, in consequence of royal orders, all taken out of and supported by the late king's manuscripts; but it has been urged, on the other hand, that there were at least two copies of the compilation, one of which may have been transcribed by Mr Dicconson, while in that published, there are one or two Scotticisms, which point at such a person as Innes. Little can be made of a comparison betwixt the style of this work and that of
- ↑ Pinkerton's Inquiry, Introduction, 55—7.
- ↑ We cannot avoid coupling with this feature, the circumstance of our having heard it whispered in the antiquarian world, that a correspondence between Innes and the court of St Germains, lately discovered, shows this to have been the avowed purpose of the author. This we have heard, "however, in so vague a manner, that we dare not draw any conclusions against the fair intentions of Innes, farther than as they may be gathered from his own writings.
- ↑ In the Edinburgh Review we discover the following note: "It is the opinion of the present preserver of the.narrative, that it was compiled from original documents by Thomas Innes, one of the superiors of the college, and author of a work entitled A Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of Scotland.'—Art. on Vox's Life of James II. Ed. Rev. xii. 280.
