From Syene, or Assuan, Bruce descended the Nile to Cairo, whence, after a short stay, he proceeded to Alexandria, and took ship for Marseilles. He remained some time on the Continent, where he was universally received in the most flattering manner, before he returned to his native land, which he did not reach until the middle of the summer of 1774, after an absence of twelve years. In 1776 he married a second time: by this wife he had two children, a son and a daughter; but he was not fortunate in his marriages, for in 1785 he again became a widower.
Various causes, among which the principal one appears to have been disgust at observing that his statements were in many instances thought unworthy of belief, retarded the composition and publication of his travels. At length, however, in 1790, seventeen years after his return to Europe, the result of his labours and adventures was laid before the world, and prejudice and ignorance united their efforts to diminish, at least, if they could not destroy, his chance of fame, the only reward which he coveted for all the hardships and dangers which he had encountered.
On the 27th of April, 1794, as he was conducting an aged lady from his drawing-room to her carriage, down the great staircase of his house at Kinnaird, his foot slipped, and falling with great force down several of the steps, he pitched upon his head, and was killed. He was buried in the churchyard of Larbert, in a tomb which he had erected for his wife.
I have carefully avoided interrupting the course of the narrative by entering into any discussions respecting those points on which Bruce’s veracity has been called in question. His detractors, without any exception of which I am aware, consist of men whose authority, in matters of this nature is no longer respected, or who never, except from their numbers, possessed any. No man of competent understanding and knowledge of mankind can read Bruce’s Travels without a thorough conviction that the writer was a person of the strictest honour and veracity, who, though as in the case of Paez, he might be hurried by wounded pride and indignation into the commission of injustice, was wholly incapable of deliberate falsehood. That the name of Dr. Johnson is found among those of Bruce’s enemies, is to be regretted on Dr. Johnson’s own account. But the circumstance can excite no surprise in any one who recollects that the doctor likewise distinguished himself among the calumniators of Milton—a name which has long since ranked among the first which history records, and is the representative, as it were, of every thing that is most sacred in genius, and most unsullied in virtue. The other cavillers at Bruce demand no ceremony. Their absurd rancour has been stimulated by a secret conviction of their own inferiority in talent and enterprise; and, despairing of raising themselves to his level, they have endeavoured to bring him down to their own. Swift explains in two lines the whole philosophy of this proceeding:—