The first to attempt a reconstruction of this early history was John Pinkerton, who published in 1789 _An Enquiry into the History of Scotland preceding the reign of Malcolm_ III., or the year 1056, _including the authentic history of that period_. It is unquestionably an essay of much originality and acuteness; and Pinkerton saw the necessity of founding the history of that period upon more trustworthy documents, but they were to a very limited extent accessible to him. The value of the work is greatly impaired by the adoption, to an excessive extent, of a theory of early Teutonic settlements in the country and of the Teutonic origin of the early population, and by an unreasoning prejudice against everything Celtic, which colours and biasses his argument throughout. Pinkerton was followed in 1807 by George Chalmers, with his more elaborate and systematic work, the _Caledonia_, based, however, to a great extent upon the less trustworthy class of the early historical documents, which had been tampered with and manipulated for a purpose. He, too, was possessed by a theory which influences his views of the earlier portion of the history throughout; and where John Pinkerton could find nothing but Gothic and the Goths, George Chalmers was equally unable to see anything but Welsh and the Cymry. In 1828 the first volume of a History of Scotland by Patrick Fraser Tytler appeared, which he continued to the accession of James VI. to the throne of England; but Tytler not only abandons this early part of the history as hopelessly obscure, but also a great part of the field occupied by Hailes in his _Annals_, and commences his history with the accession of Alexander the Third in 1249. In 1862 a very valuable contribution to the early history of Scotland was made by the late lamented Mr. E. William Robertson in his _Scotland under her Early Kings_, in which the attempt is once more made to fill up the early period left untouched by Hailes and Tytler. It is a work of great merit, and exhibits much accurate research and sound judgment.[10] Such is a short sketch of the attempts which have been made to place the early history of Scotland upon a sound basis, and to substitute a more trustworthy statement of it for the carefully manipulated fictions of Fordun, and the still more fabulous narrative of Hector Boece and his followers, prior to the appearance of Mr. Burton’s elaborate _History of Scotland, from Agricola’s Invasion to the Extinction of the last Jacobite Insurrection_, the first edition of which appeared in 1867, and the second, in which the early part is revised and much altered, in 1873.