After spending four years at Edinburgh in the study of medicine, Mackintosh repaired to London with a view to the practice of his profession. His heart seems, however, not to have been very fully enlisted in the work, and he was soon driven to the public press as a means of support. His first great work, published in 1791, commanded immediate attention, not only for its elegant and expressive as well as keen and trenchant style, but also for the enthusiastic daring with which a young man of twenty-six grappled with the most powerful and accomplished writer of the day. The volume was nothing less than a “Defence of the French Revolution against the Accusations of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke.” In point of style the work is certainly not equal to that of his great antagonist; and no more than four years later, Mackintosh himself was so frank as to say to some Frenchmen who complimented him: “Ah, gentlemen, since that time you have entirely refuted me.” But, in spite of its obvious faults, its great qualities as a piece of literary workmanship made a prodigious impression. Fox quoted it with enthusiastic approbation in the House of Commons; and Canning, who ridiculed the Revolution, is said to have told a friend that he read the book “with as much admiration as he had ever felt.” Three editions were immediately called for; and it may be doubted whether even to the present day it is not the most successful as well as the most powerful argument that has ever been made in opposition to the more celebrated treatise. The publication of this masterly review showed plainly enough that another great writer had appeared. The reception the work received encouraged Mackintosh in the gratification of his tastes; and, finding himself irresistibly inclining to questions of political philosophy, he now abandoned the profession he had already entered, and turned his attention to the study of law. In 1795 he was admitted to the bar. Four years later he produced the second great literary impression of his life in the publication of the “Introduction to a Course of Lectures on the Law of Nature and of Nations.” The remarkable impression made by this single lecture was expressed by Campbell, when he said: “Even supposing that essay had been recovered only imperfect and mutilated—if but a score of consecutive sentences could be shown, they would bear a testimony to his genius as decided as the bust of Theseus bears to Grecian art among the Elgin marbles.”