Robert Bisset, although best known for his A Biographical Sketch of the Authors of the Spectator (1793-1794) and The Life of Edmund Burke (1798), was also the author of two novels; a history of the early reign of George III; two proslavery tracts; and a spate of polemical, antidemocratic writing. Bisset's association with the Anti-Jacobin Review and its editor, John Gifford, put him at the heart of reactionary political journalism following the French Revolution. Yet "that zealous Anti-Jacobin, Dr. Bisset" (as he called himself)--however debatable his views concerning slavery and democracy--produced a surprisingly good biography of Burke and a valuable collection of short biographies of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and other contributors to the Spectator.

Robert Bisset was born to the Reverend Dr. Bisset, minister of Logierait, Perthshire, in Scotland in about 1759. The young Bisset studied at Edinburgh for the ministry but never entered the church. His reasons...