iterature of Shakespeare are full of curious matter, but on the whole
display a great waste of erudition, in seeking to show that papers which
had been proved forgeries might nevertheless have been genuine. Chalmers
also took part in the Junius controversy, and in _The Author of Junius
Ascertained, from a Concatenation of Circumstances amounting to Moral
Demonstration_, Lond. 1817, 8vo, sought to fix the authorship of the
celebrated letters on Hugh Boyd. In 1824 he published _The Poetical
Remains of some of the Scottish Kings, now first collected_; and in the
same year he edited and presented as a contribution to the Bannatyne
Club _Robene and Makyne and the Testament of Cresseid, by Robert
Henryson_. His political writings are equally numerous. Among them may
be mentioned _Collection of Treaties between Great Britain and other
Powers_, Lond. 1790, 2 vols. 8vo; _Vindication of the Privileges of the
People in respect to the Constitutional Right of Free Discussion_, &c.,
Lond. 1796, 8vo, published anonymously; _A Chronological Account of
Commerce and Coinage in Great Britain from the Restoration till 1810_,
Lond. 1810, 8vo; _Opinions of Eminent Lawyers on various points of
English Jurisprudence, chiefly concerning the Colonies, Fisheries, and
Commerce of Great Britain_, Lond. 1814, 2 vols. 8vo; _Comparative Views
of the State of Great Britain before and since the War_, Lond. 1817,
8vo.

But Chalmers's greatest work is his _Caledonia_, which, however, he did
not live to complete. The first volume appeared in 1807, and is
introductory to the others. It is divided into four books, treating
successively of the Roman, the Pictish, the Scottish and the Scoto-Saxon
periods, from 80 to 1306 A.D. In these we are presented, in a condensed
form, with an account of the people, the language and the civil and
ecclesiastical history, as well as the agricultural and commercial state
of Scotland during the first thirteen centuries of our era.
Unfortunately the chapters on the Roman period are entirely marred by
the author's having accepted as genuine Bertram's forgery _De Situ
Britanniae_; but otherwise his opinions on controverted topics are
worthy of much respect, being founded on a laborious investigation of
all the original authorities that were accessible to him. The second
volume, published in 1810, gives an account of the seven south-eastern
counties of Scotland--Roxburgh, Berwick, Haddington, Edinburgh,
Linlithgow, Peebles and Sel