Comments in refutation of pretensions advanced for the first time, and statements in a recent work "The Stirlings of Keir and their family papers"

PEEFACE. ix
The Exponent confesses himself here somewhat in a dilemma, from
three separate irons being thus put in the fire. "When the authorship of
a portion of the work is clear, it can easily be acknowledged, but when
otherwise, it may be difficult ; and with this view, in the emergency,
and in the case of a quotation or argument therefrom, reference can only
be made generally, so as to include the party, to the Keir Performance,
or to its framers and compilers, under the style or description of the
Triumvirate, which method, as will be seen, has been adopted.
The step is suggested, and indeed called for by common prudence,
because, e converso, through an attempted specification of the author or
writer, with ignorance, at the same time, of the respective merits and
contributions of the Triumvii-ate, injury might unconsciously be done
by ascribing to one what in truth was solely due to another ; and hence,
as authors — even the best — are deemed somewhat an in'itabile genus,
and neither, like Ctesar or Pompey, inclined " f err e prior em," or " parem,"
an awkward collision might thus arise, evoking perchance a new contro-
versy — for which the writer might have the credit — that it would be as
well to avoid.
Perhaps he also may be pardoned for remarking that Keir may have
submitted himself with too much confidence to the genflemen in question,
who have undertaken their task rather too hastily,* of which, indeed,
and strange inadvertencies, besides what is otherwise exceptionable, the
Keir Performance bears witness, and whom, moreover, a benevolent and
too ardent zeal to do the utmost for their principal may have blinded to
the unbiassed merits of the case. Nor is it easy to believe that if the
his time, found leisure to interest himself in owners. Cosmo Innes, Esquire, ....
tracing the descent of a house with wliich his enlarged Mr Dundas's account of the Keir
own family has long been connected (that of family."
Keir obviously). Other portions of this vo- * A more just and eligible line of conduct,
lume have also been enriched by the kindness perhaps, the writer has afterwards suggested
of Mr Dundas, in obtaining charters from the in the Exposition at p. 215.