His writings are both ill-arranged and obscure. In the course of his disquisitions on these points, we find the author zealously attached to the old maxim, that there is nothing in the understanding which was not first in the senses. This he considers as a fundamental principle in all rational systems of speculative philosophy. His metaphysics were, however, of a scholastic nature, and present a curious compound from the speculations of the Arabian philosophers, the early Scholastic divines, and some of the writers among the Dominicans of Spain.
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During 1887-1889 Coxwell collected together in two volumes a number of interesting but ill-arranged and confusing chapters upon his career as an aeronaut, to which he gave the title My Life and Balloon Experiences; to vol. i. is added a supplementary chapter on military ballooning. As a frontispiece is a photographic portrait, reproduced in the Illustrated London News (13 January 1900) as that of the foremost balloonist of the last half-century. He says: :I had hammered away in The Times for little less than a decade before there was a real military trial of ballooning for military purposes at Aldershot.
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In 1896, Forbes collaborated in two handsome but ill-arranged quarto volumes of Battles of the Nineteenth Century, and in the same year published his historical record of The Black Watch. In 1898, he committed to the press a superficial Life of Napoleon III (with portraits), based to a large extent upon the Life by Blanchard Jerrold. Previous biographies by Forbes of similar calibre were those of the Emperor William II (1889), Havelock (1890), and Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde (1895, Men of Action series). After a life of perilous adventure, Forbes died peacefully at Clarence Terrace, Regent's Park, on 30 March 1900, and he was buried in the Allenvale cemetery, near Aberdeen.
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As Scott describes him, Edward Waverley is like Don Quixote in his manner of educating himself by much reading, but as "an unstructured education", and as Scott says in the novel "consisting of much curious, though ill-arranged and miscellaneous information." Critics of Scott's novels did not see the influence of Miguel de Cervantes in the same way as Scott describes it. Scott further clarifies the degree of this similarity to Quixote in the novel, in his instructions to his readers that: > From the minuteness with which I have traced Waverley's pursuits, and the > bias which they unavoidably communicated to his imagination, the reader may > perhaps anticipate, in the following tale, an imitation of Cervantes. But he > will do my prudence injustice in the supposition.
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John Bowring, the young radical writer who had been Bentham's intimate friend and disciple, was appointed his literary executor and charged with the task of preparing a collected edition of his works. This appeared in 11 volumes in 1838–1843. Bowring based much of his edition on previously published texts (including those of Dumont) rather than Bentham's own manuscripts, and elected not to publish Bentham's works on religion at all. The edition was described by the Edinburgh Review on first publication as "incomplete, incorrect and ill-arranged", and has since been repeatedly criticised both for its omissions and for errors of detail; while Bowring's memoir of Bentham's life included in volumes 10 and 11 was described by Sir Leslie Stephen as "one of the worst biographies in the language".
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On account of the serious effects on his health of severe night labour, he was two years afterwards compelled for a time to abandon literary work, and he never formed any subsequent connection with a newspaper. With the exception of a volume of ‘Poems’ published in 1845, and the ‘Young Voyager,’ 1855, a poem descriptive of the search after Sir John Franklin, and intended for juvenile readers, the remaining works of Anderson are of the nature chiefly of popular compilations. They include an edition of the ‘Works of Lord Byron,’ with a life and notes, 1850; the ‘Poems and Songs of R. Gilfillan,’ with a memoir, 1851; and a ‘Treasury’ series, embracing the ‘Treasury of Discovery,’ 1853; of the ‘Animal World,’ 1854; of ‘Manners,’ 1855; of ‘History,’ 1856; and of ‘Nature,’ 1857. Of a somewhat higher character than these compilations are the ‘Scottish Nation,’ 1859–63, an expansion of his ‘Popular Scottish Biography’ published in 1842; and ‘Genealogy and Surnames,’ 1865. The ‘Scottish Nation,’ though diffuse and ill arranged, displays great industry and a minute acquaintance with Scottish family history; while ‘Genealogy and Surnames,’ amid much that is commonplace, contains some curious information not easily accessible elsewhere. He died suddenly at London 2 August 1866.
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