LAIDLAW, WILLIAM (1780-1845).--Poet, _s._ of a border farmer, became steward and amanuensis to Sir W. Scott, and was the author of the beautiful and well-known ballad, _Lucy's Flittin'_. LAING, DAVID (1793-1878).--Antiquary, _s._ of a bookseller in Edin., with whom he was in partnership until his appointment, in 1837, as librarian of the Signet Library. He ed. many of the publications of the Bannatyne Club, of which he was sec. (1823-61). He was also Honorary Prof. of Antiquities to the Royal Scottish Academy. Among the more important works which he ed. were _Baillie's Letters and Journals_ (1841-2), _John Knox's Works_ (1846-64), and the poems of Sir D. Lyndsay, Dunbar, and Henryson. LAING, MALCOLM (1762-1818).--Was a country gentleman in Orkney. He completed Henry's _History of Great Britain_, and wrote a _History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms_ (1802). He was an assailant of the authenticity of the Ossianic poems, and wrote a dissertation on the Participation of Mary Queen of Scots in the Murder of Darnley. He did much to improve the agriculture of Orkney. LAMB, LADY CAROLINE (1785-1828).--Novelist, _dau._ of 3rd Earl of Bessborough, _m._ the Hon. William Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne and Prime Minister. She wrote three novels, which, though of little literary value, attracted much attention. The first of these, _Glenarvon_ (1816), contained a caricature portrait of Lord Byron, with whom the authoress had shortly before been infatuated. It was followed by _Graham Hamilton_ (1822), and _Ada Reis_ (1823). Happening to meet the hearse conveying the remains of Byron, she became unconscious, and fell into mental alienation, from which she never recovered.