In 1785 Laing was admitted advocate, and from 1789 for five years was advocate for poor litigants.[4] During 1790 he was working on the electoral roll in Orkney, in the Whig interest.[5] In 1794, with Adam Gillies, he defended Joseph Gerrald in his sedition case.[6]Sir James Mackintosh, a friend, regarded Laing's delivery as far too fast, and an impediment to his legal career;[7]Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn commented quite positively on his "hard, peremptory, Celtic manner and accent".[8]
Laing finished Robert Henry's History of Great Britain with a final volume in 1793, and wrote a History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms (1800).[10] In a second edition of the History in 1804 half the work was devoted to a Dissertation on the participation of Mary Queen of Scots in the Murder of Darnley and the Casket Letters, hostile to Mary, Queen of Scots.[8] Like George Brodie and Ebenezer Marshal, Laing dwelled on negative feudal and other features of early modern Scottish history.[15] In 1804 also Laing edited The Historie and Life of King James the Sext.[16]
By modern standards, Laing erred by endorsing a "Scottish Gothic" theory of the Picts: that this founding group of the Kingdom of Scotland were not Celts, but had a Teutonic origin. He endorsed the views of John Pinkerton on the matter, as did John Jamieson and James Sibbald.[17]
In 1805 Laing published in two volumes Poems of Ossian, containing the Poetical Works of James MacPherson in Prose and Verse, with Notes and Illustrations.[8] It contained juveniliabyJames Macpherson, collector of the Ossian poems, who had died in 1796. It also described how they might be dependent on modern sources that had been borrowed.[18] Laing's flawed criticism was seminal for a far fetched theory that Macpherson had used Robert Lowth's study of Hebrew verse to construction his own alleged translations.
[19]
The "Ossian debate", on the poems' authenticity to supposed ancient sources, was coming to a head that year. Via Robert Anderson, Laing claimed he was in possession of a confession by Macpherson of the complete fabrication to another party, Sir John Elliott, who had mentioned it to Thomas Percy. On the other hand, the Report of the Highland Society (1805) upheld the authenticity claims. Percy took the eirenic view that the blame game, at least, should cease.[21]
On 10 September 1805 Laing married Margaret Dempster Carnegy, daughter of Thomas Carnegy of Craigo and Mary Gardyne. Margaret's sister was married to Adam Gillies, Lord Gillies.[22]
^Colin Kidd, Teutonist Ethnology and Scottish Nationalist Inhibition, 1780–1880, The Scottish Historical Review Vol. 74, No. 197, Part 1 (Apr., 1995), pp. 45–68, at p. 51. Published by: Edinburgh University Press. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25530660
^Robert P. Fitzgerald, The Style of Ossian, Studies in Romanticism Vol. 6, No. 1 (Autumn, 1966), pp. 22–33 at pp. 23–4. Published by: Boston University. DOI: 10.2307/25599674. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25599674
^Colin Kidd, The Rehabilitation of Scottish Jacobitism, The Scottish Historical ReviewVol. 77, No. 203, Part 1 (Apr., 1998), pp. 58–76, at pp. 63–4. Published by: Edinburgh University Press.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25530805
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1892). "Laing, Malcolm". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 31. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
