_Robert Forbes._--I should be glad if any of your correspondents could
furnish me with any particulars relative to this talented and eccentric
individual. He was the author of _The Dominie Deposed_, in the Buchan
dialect. On the title-page of that piece he is described as "Robert Forbes,
A.M., Schoolmaster of Peterculter," near Aberdeen. On application, however,
to the Session Clerk of Peterculter, that functionary states that no such
person was ever schoolmaster of that parish. Be this as it may, Forbes was
obliged to leave Scotland on account of an intrigue, which he has
humorously described in his _Dominie Deposed_. He appears to have removed
to London, where he commenced the business of a hosier, in a shop on Tower
Hill, at the sign of the "Book." Here he composed that {511} celebrated
travestie on the _Speech of Ajax to the Grecian Chiefs_, also in the Buchan
dialect:
"The wight an' doughty captains a',
Upo' their doups sat down;
A rangel o' the commoun fouk
In bourachs a' stood roun."
I think Forbes states that his place of business on Tower Hill was "hard by
the shop of Robbie Mill." (See Chalmers' _Life of Ruddiman_.) Forbes is
supposed to have died about the year 1750.