GRAHAM, James, Marquis of Montrose, a man celebrated by one party as a hero comparable to the greatest of antiquity, and branded by another as a renegade and a traitor. His name, his exploits, and his character belong properly to history (see the article Britain) ; but he deserves notice here as one who occupied his intervals of leisure, few and far between, with the elegant and peaceful pursuits of literature. Such of his poems as have been preserved, though they possess but little merit in themselves, are remarkable as the effusions of a mind in which the most heroic and chivalrous daring seems to have been attempered by a degree of refinement beyond his age, and a capacity for pursuits less dazzling, but far more innocent [7:10:638]and useful, than those which have shed an equivocal lustre on his name. His desertion of the covenanters may perhaps be excused, but cannot be defended; amidst the conflicts of exasperated parties and the excitement of civil commotion, it is not easy to steer a consistent and blameless course; but the laws of honour and morality are nevertheless unchangeable. Having joined the royal cause, how ever, he devoted himself to promote its success; and if his caution had been equal to his genius, or if he had been provided with the necessary supplies, he would in all probability have reduced the kingdom of Scotland to the necessity of acknowledging the royal authority. But, from want of means, his conquests were lost almost as soon as gained; victory produced him no solid advantage; and the first reverse he experienced proved his ruin. His second attempt, after the death of Charles I, was accordingly hopeless from the commencement; he was completely defeated by the army sent against him; and, being betrayed into the hands of the enemy by the laird of Assynt, his intimate friend, he was carried to Edinburgh, and executed with every circumstance of indignity, on the 21st of May 1650. His exploits made him a hero, and to this his enemies added the distinction of martyrdom. Considered as a commander, Montrose was merely a bold and active partisan; a sort of guerilla chief, whose services would have been invaluable to the party he had espoused, if there had been in the field a regular force with which he could have connected his operations, but who, acting independently, contributed merely to aggravate the evils of the contest, without in the slightest degree affecting its result.

Graham, Sir Richard, Lord Viscount Preston, eldest son of Sir George Graham of Netherby, in Cumberland, was born in the year 1648. He was sent by Charles II. as ambassador to Louis XIV., and was master of the wardrobe and secretary of state under James II. But when the revolution took place, he was tried and condemned, on , a charge of attempting the restoration of that prince; and although he obtained a pardon by the queen’s intercession, he spent the remainder of his days in retirement He published an elegant translation of Boethius on the Consolations of Philosophy, and died in 1695.

Graham, George, clock and watch-maker, the most ingenious and accurate artist of his time, was born in 1675. After his apprenticeship, Mr Tompion received him into his family on account of his merit and treated him with a kind of parental affection as long as he lived. Besides his universally acknowledged skill in his profession, he was a complete mechanic and astronomer; the great mural arch in the observatory at Greenwich was made for Dr Halley, under his immediate inspection, and divided by his own hand; and from this incomparable original, the best foreign instruments of the kind were copied by English artists. The sector by which Dr Bradley first discovered two new motions in the fixed stars was of his invention and construction; and when the French academicians were sent to measure a degree of the meridian in Lapland, with the view of determining the figure of the earth, Mr Graham was considered the fittest person in Europe to supply them with instmments. He was for many years a member of the Royal Society, to which he communicated several ingenious and important discoveries. He died in 1751.