|
CUNNINGHAM, ALEXANDER, the
historian, was born in the year 1654, in the county of Selkirk, and parish
of Ettrick, of which his father was minister. Having acquired the
elementary branches of learning at home, he, according to the prevailing
custom among Scottish gentlemen of that period, proceeded to Holland to
finish his education, and it is believed that it was there that he made
those friends, among the English refugees at the Hague, who afterwards
contributed so powerfully to the advancement of his fortunes. He came over
to England with the prince of Orange in 1688, and was honoured with the
intimacy of the leading men by whom the revolution was accomplished, more
especially with that of the earls of Sunderland and Argyle. After his
return to Britain he was employed as tutor and travelling companion to the
earl of Hyndford, and also to that nobleman’s brother, the honourable Mr
William Carmichael, who was solicitor-general of Scotland in the reign of
queen Anne. Mr Cunningham was afterwards travelling companion to lord
Lorne, better known under the title of John the great duke of Argyle.
While Mr Cunningham was
travelling on the continent with lord Lorne, he was employed by the
administration in transmitting secret intelligence on the most important
subjects, and he was also intrusted by the confederate generals of the
allied army to make representations to the British court. When in Holland
in 1703, along with lord Lorne, he met the celebrated Addison, and was
received in the most gracious manner by the elector and the princess
Sophia. It is supposed that it is to the knowledge of military affairs,
acquired through his intimacy with lord Lorne, that the description of
battles, and the other operations of war contained in Mr Cunningham’s
history, owe that lucid distinctness for which they are so remarkable.
During the year 1710, he travelled on the continent with lord Lonsdale.
Through the interest and
friendship of Argyle and Sunderland, and of Sir Robert Walpole, Mr
Cunningham, on the accession of George I, was sent as British envoy to the
republic of Venice, where he remained from the year 1715 to 1720. His
dispatches from Venice have been collected and arranged by Mr Astle. For
many years after Mr Cunningham’s return from Italy, he passed his life
in studious retirement in London. In 1735, he was visited by lord Hyndford,
to whose father he had been tutor, who found him a very infirm old man,
sitting in a great arm chair, habited in a night-gown. He is believed to
have lived until the year 1737, and to have been buried in the vicars’
chancel of St Martin’s church, where an Alexander Cunningham lies
interred, who died on the 15th May, 1737, in the 83d year of his age,
which corresponds with the date of Mr Cunningham’s birth. He seems to
have died rich, as, by his will, he directs his landlord not to expend
more than eighty pounds on his funeral. He left the bulk of his fortune to
his nephew, Archibald Cunningham of Greenock, reserving eight thousand
pounds in trust for his nieces, and four thousand pounds to Cunningham of
Craigends.
Mr Cunningham’s history
of Britain, which was originally written in Latin, but afterwards
translated into English by Dr William Thomson, is the performance on which
his claim to be remembered by posterity chiefly rests. It was first
published in 1787, many years after his death, in two vols. 4to. This work
embraces the history of Britain from the Revolution of 1688 to the
accession of George I.; and being written by a man who was not only well
versed but deeply concerned in many of the political events of the period,
and who was intimately acquainted with most of the leading men of the age,
it is a production of great historical importance. His characters are
drawn with much judgment and discrimination and generally with
impartiality, although is prejudices against bishop Burnet and general
Stanhope led him to do injustice to these two great men. He also indulged
himself in severe sarcasms against the clergy and the female sex, a
weakness for which it is difficult to find any excuse. His work abounds in
just observations on the political events of the times, and his facts are
related with much perspicuity, and occasionally with great animation, more
especially where he treats of the operations of war.
"A coincidence of name
has led to the confounding of this historian with Alexander Cunningham,
the celebrated editor and emendator of Horace, and the antagonist of
Bentley; but the evidence produced by Dr. Thomson in a very elaborate
preface to Cunningham’s history, leads to a strong presumption that they
were different persons: and a late writer, under the signature of Crito,
in the Scots Magazine for October, 1804, seems to have put this fact
beyond question; the editor of Horace having died at the Hague in 1730,
and the historian at London in 1737." Tytler’s Life of Kaimes,
vol. 1, Appen. No. 1.
|
