Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/27

Rh dreams I found myself the most arrant coward that ever was. Not only my courage, but my strength failed me in every danger; and I often rose from my bed in the morning in such a panic, that it took some time to get the better of it I wished very much to get free of these uneasy dreams, which not only made me unhappy in sleep, but often left a disagreeable impression in my mind for some part of the following day. I thought it was worth trying whether it was possible to recollect that it was all a dream, and that I was in no real danger, and that every fright I had was a dream. After many fruitless attempts to recollect this when the danger appeared, I effected it at last, and have often, when I was sliding over a precipice into the abyss, recollected that it was all a dream, and boldly jumped down. The effect of this commonly was, that I immediately awoke. But I awoke calm and intrepid, which I thought a great acquisition. After this, my dreams were never very uneasy; and, in a short time, I dreamed not at all." That a mind such as Reid's should have been subject to " castle-building," and to singular dreams, must be accounted for from the state of his body ; while the strong active powers of his mind are shown in the mastership which he at length acquired over the propensity.

While he remained at Marischal college, Reid was appointed to the librarianship, which his ancestor had founded. During this period, he formed an intimacy with John Stewart, afterwards professor of mathematics in Marischal college. In 1736, he accompanied this gentleman to England, and they together visited London, Oxford, and Cambridge, enjoying an intercourse with Dr David Gregory, Martin, Folkes, and Dr Bentley. In 1737, the King's college, as patrons, presented Dr Reid with the living of New Machar, in Aberdeenshire. An aversion to the law of patronage, which then strongly characterized many districts of Scotland, excited hostile feelings against a man, who, if the parishioners could have shown their will as well in making a choice as in vituperating the person chosen, would have been the very man after their heart. In entering on his cure, he was even exposed to personal danger. "His unwearied attention, however," says professor Stewart, "to the duties of his office; the mildness and forbearance of his temper, and the active spirit of his humanity, soon overcame all these prejudices: and, not many years afterwards, when he was called to a different situation, the same persons who had suffered themselves to be so far misled, as to take a share in the outrages against him, followed him, on his departure, with their blessings and tears." On his departure, some old men are said to have observed, "We fought against Dr Reid when he came, and would have fought for him when he went away." It is said that, for at least a considerable portion of the time which he spent at New Machar, he was accustomed to preach the sermons of Dr Tillotson and Dr Evans, instead of his own; a circumstance which his biographer attributes to modesty and self-diffidence. In 1740, he married Elizabeth, the daughter of his uncle, Dr George Reid, physician in London. About this period, he is said to have spent his time in intensely studying moral philosophy, and in making those observations on the organs of sense, and their operation on the external world, which formed the broad basis of his philosophy. Reid was not a precocious genius; and whatever he wrote in early life, is said to have been defective in style: but he busied himself in planting good seed, which, in the autumn of his days, produced to himself and to the world a rich and abundant harvest. His first public literary attempt was an "Essay on Quantity, occasioned by reading a Treatise, in which Simple and Compound Ratios are applied to Virtue and Merit," published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, in 1748. This paper is levelled at the "Inquiry into the Origin of our ideas of Beauty and Virtue," by Dr Hutcheson, who had committed the venial philosophical sin, of