ABSTRACT
Thomas Erskine displayed apt scholarship and high spirits as a grammar school student, first in Edinburgh and then in St. Andrews. A university degree reduced from five to three years the required period of enrollment at an Inn of Court; therefore, since university and law terms could be kept concurrently and since Erskine was entitled by rank to a degree without examination, he also matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. In striking but diffuse fashion the plea for Peltier magnifies the domestic and European need for a free English press, it turns aside for extended condemnation of Bonaparte and the Jacobin spirit, it is threaded with literary allusion, analogy, and quotation, often more impressive than persuasive. Finally, more than the ancients or his contemporaries, he devoted his rhetorical efforts to the end of evoking and controlling strongly motivated reason through rigorously organized and sharply relevant substance and symbols.
