Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/181

Rh The object of this brief notice was born in the college of Edinburgh, on the 22nd of November, 1753, and his health, during the first period of his life, was so feeble and precarious, that it was with more than the ordinary anxiety and solicitude of parents that his infancy was reared. His early years were spent partly in the house at that time attached to the mathematical chair of the university, and partly at Catrine, his father's property in Ayrshire, to which the family regularly removed every summer, when the academical session was concluded. At the age of seven, he was sent to the High School, where he distinguished himself by the quickness and accuracy of his apprehension, and where the singular felicity and spirit with which he caught and transfused into his own language the ideas of the classical writers, attracted the particular remark of his instructors.

Having completed the customary course of education at this seminary, he was entered as a student at the college of Edinburgh. Under the immediate instruction of such a mathematician and teacher as his father, it may readily be supposed that he made early proficiency in the exact sciences; but the distinguishing bent of his philosophical genius recommended him in a still more par- ticular manner to the notice of Dr Stevenson, then professor of logic, and of Dr Adam Ferguson, who filled the moral philosophy chair.

In order to prosecute his favourite studies under the most favourable circumstances, he proceeded, at the commencement of the session of 1771, to the university of Glasgow, to attend the lectures of Dr Reid, who was then in the zenith of his reputation. The progress which he here made in his metaphysical studies, was proportioned to the ardour with which he devoted himself to the subject ; and, not content with listening merely to the instructions of his master, or with the speculations of his leisure hours, he composed during the session that admirable Essay on Dreaming, which he afterwards published in the first volume of the "Philosophy of the Human Mind."

The declining state of his father's health compelled him, in the autumn of the following year, before he had reached the age of nineteen, to undertake the task of teaching the mathematical classes in the Edinburgh university. With what success he was able to fulfill this duty, was sufficiently evinced by the event; for, with all Dr Matthew Stewart's well-merited celebrity, the number of students considerably increased under his son. As soon as he had completed his twenty-first year, he was appointed assistant and successor to his father, and in this capacity he continued to conduct the mathematical studies in the university till his father's death, in the year 1785, when he was nominated to the vacant chair.

Although this continued, however, to be his ostensible situation in the university, his avocations were more varied. In the year 1778, during which Dr Adam Ferguson accompanied the commissioners to America, he undertook to supply his place in the moral philosophy class; a labour that was the more overwhelming, as he had for the first time given notice, a short time before his assistance was requested, of his intention to add a course of lectures on astronomy to the two classes which he taught as professor of mathematics. Such was the extraordinary fertility of his mind, and the facility with which it adapted its powers to such inquiries, that, although the proposal was made to him and accepted on Thursday, he commenced the course of metaphysics the following Monday, and continued, during the whole of the season, to think out and arrange in his head in the morning, (while walking backwards and forwards in a small garden attached to his father's house in the college,) the matter