DAVID

See also:

• LAING, ALEXANDER GORDON (1793–1826)
• DAVID LAING (1793–1878)
• LAING, MALCOLM (1762-1818)
• LAING, SAMUEL (1810-1897)

LAING (1793–1878)  , Scottish antiquary, the son of William Laing, a bookseller in Edinburgh, was born in that city on the loth of April 1793 . Educated at the Canongate Grammar School, when fourteen he was apprenticed to his father . Shortly after the death of the latter in 1837, Laing was elected to the librarianship of the Signet Library, which post he retained till his death . Apart from an extraordinary general bibliographical knowledge, Laing was best known as a lifelong student of the literary and artistic history of Scotland . He published no original volumes, but contented himself with editing the works of others . Of these, the chief are—Dunbar's Works (2 vols., .1834), with a supplement added in 1865; Robert Baillie's Letters and Journals (3 vols., 1841–1842); John Knox's Works (6 vols., 1846–1864); Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson (1865); Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (3 vols., 1872–1879); Sir David Lyndsay's Poetical Works (3 vols., 1879) . Laing was for more than fifty years a member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and he contributed upwards of a hundred separate papers to their Proceedings . He was also for more than forty years secretary to the Bannatyne Club, many of the publications of which were edited by him . He was struck with paralysis in 1878 while in the Signet Library, and it is related that, on recovering consciousness, he looked about and asked if a proof of Wyntoun had been sent from the printers . He died a few days afterwards, on the 18th of October, in his eighty-sixth year . His library was sold by auction, and realized £16,137 . To the university of Edinburgh he bequeathed his collection of MSS .

See the

Biographical Memoir prefixed to Select Remains of Ancient, Popular and Romance Poetry of Scotland, edited by John Small (Edinburgh, 1885) ; also T . G . Stevenson, Notices of David Laing with List of his Publications, &c . (privately printed 1878) .