Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/184

320 melancholy interest attaches, in the estimation of his friends, from the knowledge that it was in the devotion of his mind to this occupation that he sought a diversion to his thoughts, from the affliction he experienced in the death of his second and youngest son. Although, however, the fruits of his studies were not given to the world, the process of intellectual exertion was urn-emitted. The leading branches of metaphysics had become so familiar to his mind, that the lectures which he delivered, very generally extempore, and which varied more or less in the language and matter every year, seemed to cost him little effort, and he was thus left in a great degree at liberty to apply the larger part of his day to the prosecution of his further speculations. Although he had read more than most of those who are considered learned, his life, as he has himself somewhere remarked, was spent much more in reflecting than in reading ; and so unceasing was the activity of his mind, and so strong his disposition to trace all subjects of speculation, that were worthy to attract his interest, up to their first principles, that all important objects and occurrences furnished fresh matter to his thoughts. The public events of the time suggested many of his inquiries into the principles of political economy; his reflections on his occasional tours through the country, many of his speculations on the picturesque, the beautiful, and the sublime; and the study of the chaiaoters of his friends and acquaintances, and of remarkable individuals with whom he happened to be thrown into contact, many of his most profound observations on the sources of the varieties and anomalies of human nature.

In the period which intervened between the publication of his first volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, and the appearance of his Philosophical Essays, he produced and prepared the matter of all his other writings, with the exception of his Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy, prefixed to the Supplement of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Independent of the prosecution of those metaphysical inquiries which constitute the substance of his second and third volumes of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, to this epoch of his life are to be referred the speculations in which he engaged with respect to the science of political economy, the principles of which he first embodied in a course of lectures, which, in the year 1800, he added as a second course to the lectures which formed the immediate subject of the instruction previously delivered in the university from the moral philosophy chair. So general and extensive was his acquaintance with almost every department of literature, and so readily did he arrange his ideas on any subject, with a view to their communication to others, that his colleagues frequently, in the event of illness or absence, availed themselves of his assistance in the instruction of their classes. In addition to his own academical duties, he repeatedly supplied the place of Dr John Robison, professor of natural philosophy. He taught for several months during one winter the Greek classes for the late Mr Dalzell: he more than one season taught the mathematical classes for Mr Playfair: he delivered some lectures on logic during an illness of Dr Finlayson; and, if we mistake not, he one winter lectured for some time on belles lettres for the successor of Dr Blair.

In 1796, he was induced once more to open his house for the reception of pupils; and in this capacity, the late lord Asuburton, the sen of the celebrated Mr Dunning, the earl of Warwick, the earl of Dudley, the present lord Palmerston, and his brother the honourable Mr Temple, were placed under his care. The present marquis of Lansdowne, though not an inmate in his family, was resident at this tune in Edinburgh, and a frequent guest at his house, and for him he contracted the highest esteem; and he lived to see him, along with two of his own pupils, cabinet ministers at the same time. Justly conceiving that the