STRAHAN, William, an eminent printer, was born at Edinburgh in the year 1715. His father, who had a small appointment in the customs, gave his son the education which every one of decent rank then received in a country where the avenues to learning were easy, and open to men of the most moderate circumstances. After having passed through the tuition of a grammar-school, he served an apprenticeship to a printer, and when a very young man removed to a wider sphere in that line of business, and went to follow his trade in London. Sober, diligent, and attentive, while his emoluments were for some time very scanty, he contrived to live rather within than beyond his income; and though he married early, and without such a provision as prudence might have looked for in the establishment of a family, he continued to thrive, and to better his circumstances. This he would often mention as an encouragement to early matrimony; and used to say, he never had a child born that Providence did not send some increase of income to provide for the increase of his household. With sufficient vigour of mind, he had that happy flow of animal spirits that is not easily discouraged by unpromising appearances.

His abilities in his profession, accompanied with perfect integrity and unabating diligence, enabled him, after the first difficulties were overcome, to advance with rapid success. And he was one of the most flourishing men of the trade, when, in the year 1740, he purchased a share of the patent for king’s printer, of Mr Eyre, with whom he maintained the most cordial intimacy during the rest of his life. Beside the emoluments arising from this appointment, as well as from a very extensive private business, he now drew largely from a field which it required some degree of speculative sagacity to cultivate, on account of the great literary property which he acquired by purchasing the copyrights of the most celebrated authors of the time. Here his liberality kept pace with his prudence, and in some cases went perhaps rather beyond it. Never had such rewards been given to the labours of literary men, as were received from him and his associates in their purchases of copyrights.

Having now attained the first great object of business, wealth, Mr Strahan looked with a very allowable ambition on the stations of political rank and eminence. Politics had long occupied his active mind, and he had for many years pursued them as his favourite amusement, by corresponding on that subject with some of the first characters of the age. Mr Strahan’s queries to Dr Franklin in the year 1769, respecting the discontents of the Americans, published in the London Chronicle of 28th July 1778, show the just conception which he entertained of the important consequences of that dispute, and his anxiety as a good subject to investigate, at that early period, the proper means by which their grievances might be removed, and a permanent harmony restored between the two countries. In the year 1775 he was elected a member of parliament for the borough of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, with a very illustrious colleague, Mr Fox; and in the succeeding parliament, for Wooton Basset, in the same county. In this station, applying himself[7:20:745] with that industry which was natural to him, he was a useful member, and attended the house with a scrupulous punctuality. His talents for business acquired the consideration to which they were entitled, and were not unnoticed by the minister.

In his political connection, he was constant to the friends to whom he had first been attached. He was a steady supporter of that party who were turned out of administration in spring 1784, and lost his seat in the House of Commonsby the dissolution of parliament with which that change was followed; nor did he show any disposition to resume his place on the return of the new parliament. He had begun to feel some decline in his health, which had rather suffered from the long sittings with which the political warfare had been attended. Without any fixed disease, his strength visibly decayed; and though his spirits survived his strength, yet the vigour and activity of his mind were considerably impaired. Both continued gradually to decline till his death, which happened on the 9th of July 1785, in the seventy-first year of his age.