[1] His play Douglas was a standard Scottish school text until the Second World War, but his work is now largely neglected.

With many others he was carried to Doune Castle in Perthshire, but soon escaped, reaching Alloa on foot, from where they got passage on the sloop-of-war Vulture to Queensferry.

[4] In July 1746, Home was presented to the parish of Athelstaneford in East Lothian, which had been left vacant by the death of Robert Blair.

It was performed on 14 December 1756 with overwhelming success, in spite of the opposition of the presbytery, who summoned Alexander Carlyle to answer for having attended its representation.

Hume summed up his admiration for Douglas by saying that his friend possessed "the true theatric genius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and licentiousness of the other.

"[citation needed] Gray, writing to Horace Walpole (August 1757), said that the author "seemed to have retrieved the true language of the stage, which has been lost for these hundred years," but Samuel Johnson held aloof from the general enthusiasm, and averred that there were not ten good lines in the whole play.

By dint of good acting and powerful support, according to Genest, the play lasted for eleven days, but it was lamentably inferior to Douglas.

These are: "The Fate of Caesar", "Verses upon Inveraray", "Epistle to the Earl of Eglintoun", "Prologue on the Birthday of the Prince of Wales, 1759" and several "Epigrams", which are printed in vol.

Voltaire published his Le Gaffe, ou l'Ecossaise (1760), Londres (really Geneva), as a translation from the work of Hume, described as pasteur de l'église d'Edimbourg, but Home seems to have taken no notice of the mystification.

[1] Home is amongst the sixteen writers and poets depicted on the lower capital heads of the Scott Monument on Princes Street in Edinburgh.