240 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith
is in the Gothic style, with a tower 130 feet high,
surmounted by an open crown.
On the east side of this street, and near its
northern end, stood the house in which John
Home, the author of ?( Douglas ? and other tragedies,
was born, on the 13th September, 1724. His
father, Alexander Home, was Town Clerk of Leith,
and his mother was Christian Hay, daughter of a
writer in Edinburgh. He was educated at the
Grammar School in the Kirkgate, and subsequently
succeeded in carrying Thomas Barrow, who had
dislocated his ankle in the descent, to Alloa, where
they were received on board the YuZture, sloopofwar,
commanded by Captain Falconer, who landed
them in his barge at the Queen?s Ferry, from
whence Home rFturned to his father?s house in
Leith.
Subsequently he became the associate and friend
of Drs. Robertson and Blair, David Hume, Adam
Fergusson, Adam Smith, and other eminent Ziterati
ST. JAMES?S CHAPEL, 1820. (Aftcr Stow.)
at the university of the capital. His father was a
son of Home of Flass (says Henry Mackenzie, in
his ? Memoirs ?1, a lineal descendant of Sir James
Home of Cowdenknowes, ancestor of the Earls of
Home. He was licensed by the Presbytery of
Edinburgh on the 4th of April, in the memorable
year 1745, and became a volunteer in the corps so
futilely formed to assist in the defence of Edinburgh
against Prince Charles Edward Serving as a
volunteer in the Hanoverian interest, he was taken
prisoner at thevictory of Falkirk, and committed to
the castle of Doune in hlonteith, from whence,
with some others, he effected an escape by forming
ropes of the bedclothes-an adventure which he
details in his own history of the civil strife. They
of whom the Edinburgh of that day could boast ;
and in 1746 he was inducted as minister at Athelstaneford,
his immediate predecessor being Robert
Blair, author of ? The Grab-e," and there he produced
his first drama, founded on the death of
Agis, King of Sparta, which Gamck declined when
offered for representation in I 749.
In 1755 Home set off on horseback to London
from his house in East Lothian, with the
tragedy of ?Ilouglas? in his pocket, says Henry
Mackenzie. ?? His habitual carelessness was strongly
shown by his having thought of no better conveyance
for this MS.-by which he #vas to acquire
all the fame and future success of which his friends
were so confident-than the pocket of the great-
.
