PLAYFAIR, John, a mathematician and philosopher of great eminence and celebrity; and so peculiarly a benefactor to this publication, as would have made it fit that some memorial of him should be preserved in these pages, even if it could have been surmised that it might not have been found in any other place. There are few names, however, in the recent history of British science that arc more extensively or advantageously known, or of which the few particulars that remain to be recorded will be more generally interesting. His life, like most others that have been dedicated to the silent pursuits of learning and science, does not abound in incidents or adventures; but it is full of honour, both for the individual and the studies to which he was devoted, and may be read with more profit than many more ambitious histories.

He was the eldest son of the Reverend James Playfair, minister of Benvie, in Forfarshire; in which place he was born on the 10th of March 1748. He resided at home, under the domestic tuition of his father, until the age of fourteen, when he entered at the University of St Andrews; and was almost immediately distinguished, not merely for his singular proficiency in mathematical learning, but for the extent of his general knowledge, the clearness of his judgment, and the dignity and propriety of his conduct. A remarkable testimony to this effect has been made public in an early letter of Principal George Hill, who was at this time one of his fellow-students, and was himself so remarkable for early talent, that we find it recorded of him, that he had privately composed an excellent sermon in the tenth year of his age. A youth of this description cannot be supposed to have been very indulgent in his estimate of the merits of his competitors; and it could therefore have been no ordinary measure of ability that called forth the following ingenuous avowal, in a confidential letter to his mother: “Playfair has very great merit, and more knowledge and a better judgment than any of his class-fellows. I make no exceptions; my parts might be more showy, and the kind of reading to which my inclination led me was calculated to enable me to make a better figure at St Andrews; but in judgment and understanding I was greatly inferior to him.”^[1. Dr Cook’s Life of Principal HilL ] It isscarcely a stronger, though undoubtedly a very different proof of his rare attainments, that when the professor of natural philosophy, Wilkie, the once celebrated author of the Epigoniad, was prevented by indisposition from delivering the regular lectures, he used generally to delegate the task of instruction to his youthful pupil. Wilkie, besides being a scholar and philosopher of no mean note, was a man of primitive benevolence and integrity, and of great vivacity in conversation; and the friendship which, in spite of the disparity of their years, was speedily formed between him and young Playfair, speaks as much for the social and moral character of the latter, as his substitution of him in the class-room does for his early proficiency in science. On this last subject we shall mention but one fact more. In 1766, when only eighteen years of age, he offered himself, with the approbation of his instructors at St Andrews, as candidate for the professorship of mathematics in Mareschal College, Aberdeen, and sustained, with the most distinguished credit, an examination or comparative trial, which lasted eleven days, and embraced nearly the whole range of the exact sciences. Out of the six competitors who entered the lists against him, two only were judged to have excelled him, the Reverend Dr Trail, who was appointed to the office, and Dr Hamilton, who afterwards succeeded to and long filled it with much reputation.

„ In 1769, he removed to Edinburgh, where his merit and modesty very soon introduced him to the friendship of Dr Robertson, Adam Smith, Dr Matthew Stewart, Dr Black, and Dr Hutton; with all of whom he continued on terms of the utmost cordiality during the whole period of their lives. In 1772, he was a candidate for the professorship of natural philosophy at St Andrews, vacant by the death of his friend Dr Wilkie. There was no comparative trial on this occasion; and he was again unsuccessful, under circumstances which have led one of the most dutiful sons of that university (Dr Cook, in his Life of Principal HilD to remark, “how much it suffered in thus losing a man by whose talents its reputation would have been so highly promoted.” In the course of the same year, the death of his father suddenly devolved upon him the burden of supporting the family, and admonished him no longer to delay the final election of a profession. He had been educated with a view to the church, and was every way qualified to accept a living on the establishment; but his decided predilection for science had hitherto made him hesitate about engaging in a vocation, the duties of which, he felt, if conscientiously discharged, would necessarily interfere, to a great extent, with the studies he was loth to abandon. In this emergency, however, he thought himself no longer entitled to indulge in those predilections, and accordingly made application to Lord Gray, the patron, for a presentation to the livings of Liff and Benvie, which had been filled by his father. His lordship was too well aware of his merits to hesitate about conferring so great a benefit on the parishioners; and immediately issued a presentation in his favour, although, from some challenge of his right to the patronage, induction was not obtained until late in the year 1773.

From this period until 1782 Mr Playfair was constantly resident at Liff, and occupied almost exclusively with the pastoral duties of his office. In this retreat his leisure hours were dedicated to the education of his younger brothers, and to a very close and intimate correspondence with Mr Robertson (afterwards Lord Robertson), the son of the illustrious historian, to whom he seems to have confined the remarks that occurred to him upon the different authors he perused, and the subjects of speculation which they suggested. We cannot help hoping, that some selection from this correspondence may one day be given to the public. In the year 1779, he contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Society of London a paper on the Arithmetic of Impossible Quantities, which exhibits, within a very small compass, a striking example of the rare and admirable talent of detaching the sound spirit of science from what may be termed its mysticism, and circumscribing, by the most precise and luminous boundaries, the vague and unlimited inquiries into which many mathematicians had been seduced by the nature of the instruments they employed.

In the year 1782 he was induced, by very advantageous offers, to resign his charge, and to superintend the education of Mr Ferguson of Raith, and his brother Sir Ronald; an arrangement which restored him, in a great measure, to the literary and scientific society of Edinburgh, and enabled him to gratify himself by a personal introduction to several of the most eminent cultivators of science in London. He had repeatedly visited Dr Maskelyne, astronomer royal, whilst that ingenious mathematician was busied, in 1774, in making a series of observations in Perthshire, on the attraction of mountains; and, whilstsharingthe shelter of his tent on the side of Schehallien, contracted with him a cordial friendship, which continued unbroken for the remainder of their lives. Under these honourable auspices he made his first appearance in London in 1782, and was speedily introduced to all those in whom he was likely to take most interest. He seems to have kept a pretty full and correct journal of all that he observed during this journey to the metropolis; and a portion of it, [7:18:45] which is prefixed to the late collection of his works, is, in our judgment, one of the most interesting parts of that publication. It is not only written with great elegance •and accuracy, but affords, in the free, candid, and pointed observations which it contains on the different individuals with whom he comes in contact, a very remarkable proof of his quick and sagacious perception of character, and his power of selecting and turning to account, even in the fever and distraction of a first visit to such a scene, all that was really worthy of careful observation or permanent remembrance.

In 1785 he was received into the University of Edinburgh, in consequence of an arrangement between his two illustrious associates, Dr Adam Ferguson and Mr Dugald Stewart. Mr Stewart exchanged the chair of mathematics, in which he had succeeded to his father, for that of moral philosophy, which had been long filled by Dr Ferguson; who, finding that the delicate state of his health would prevent him from discharging the active duties of the mathematical professor, immediately devolved them upon Mr Playfair, for whom he procured the appointment of joint professor in that department.

In 1788 he published, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Biographical Account of Dr Matthew Stewart, which is remarkable, not only for the ease and purity of the style, but also as containing a singularly clear and interesting account of the labours of Dr Simson in the restoration of the ancient geometry, and of the success both of him and Dr Stewart in adapting the elegant simplicity of the Greek methods of investigation to problems which had previously been regarded as insoluble except by the aid of the modern analysis. He also published, in the same year, a paper on the Causes which affect the Accuracy of Barometrical Measurements, which is written with all the perspicuity, caution, and sagacity that constitute the great excellence and the great difficulty of such disquisitions, where scientific principles are employed to give precision to physical observations.

In 1790 he published in the same Transactions a paper of still greater interest and delicacy, on the Astronomy of the Brahmins; a subject which had been recently recommended to the notice of the European scientific world by the curious and learned observations of Μ. Bailly, in his General History of Astronomy, but had never met with so minute and scrupulous an investigation as it now received at the hands of Mr Playfair. The whole treatise is written with a beautiful perspicuity, in an admirable spirit of candour and ingenuity, and in a style more elegant and spirited than had yet lent its attraction to subjects so recondite and abstruse. The publication accordingly attracted very general notice, both in Europe and in Asia; and gave rise to much discussion and research, the final value and result of which does not seem yet to be ascertained. This was followed in 1794 by a learned and very beautiful treatise on the Origin and Investigation of Porisms, in which the obscure nature of the very comprehensive and indefinite theorems to which this name was applied by the ancient geometers, is explained with the most lucid simplicity; and the extraordinary merits of Dr Simson, in deducing their true theory from the very vague and scanty notices of them which had come down to his time, are commemorated with a noble spirit of emulation.

In 1795 he published his Elements of Geometry, for the use of the pupils attending his class; a work which has since been held in such estimation by the public, as to have gone through five editions of a thousand copies each, four of which were called for since the work ceased to be used as a class-book in the University of Edinburgh. In 1797 he composed a sequel to his first paper on the Indian Astronomy, in the shape of Observations on the Trigonometrical Tables of the Brahmins; and also a masterly collection, of

Theorms on the Figure of the Earth. It is also understood that he occupied himself a good deal at this time in the preparation of an Essay on the Accidental Discoveries made by Men of Science while in Pursuit of some other Object; although we find no portion of this curious discussion in the collection of his works.

His excellent and ingenious friend Dr Hutton died in the year last mentioned; and Mr Playfair, having undertaken to draw up a biographical account of him for the Royal Society, was first led to study his ingenious but somewhat crude speculations on the Theory of the Earth, and afterwards to lend them the assistance of his own powerful pen in his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory. This work, upon which he bestowed more time and labour than on any of his other productions, did not appear till 1802; and it was not till 1803 that he presented to their associates his admirable memoir of their departed friend.

Whatever opinion may be formed, now or hereafter, of the truth or soundness of the suppositions by which Dr Hutton endeavoured to explain the actual state and condition of our globe, it is impossible to doubt that Mr Playfair’s illustration of that theory must always be ranked amongst the most brilliant and powerful productions of philosophical genius. The beautiful clearness and captivating eloquence with which the system itself is unfolded and explained, the spirit and force of reasoning with which all the objections to it are combated, the skill with which the infinite variety of facts which it brought into view are combined into one grand and legitimate introduction, and the judgment and extent of learning by which so many large and profound views of nature are brought to bear upon the points in discussion, and blended into one large and discursive argument, uniting the utmost logical precision with the richest variety of topics, and the highest graces of composition—are merits which have been universally acknowledged in this performance, even by those who have not been convinced by its reasonings, and have extorted, even from the fastidious critics of France, the acknowledgment that “Mr Playfair writes as well as Buffon, and reasons incomparably better.”

The biographical account of Dr Hutton is by far the best of Mr Playfair’s productions in this line, and contains not only an eloquent and luminous account of the speculations in which he was engaged, but, what is too often forgotten in this species of biography, a charming portrait of the individual, drawn, no doubt, by a favourable hand, but gaining far more in grace and effect than it can possibly have lost in correctness, from the softening colours of affection.

In 1805 he quitted the chair of mathematics to succeed Professor Robison in that of natural philosophy. The appointment of Mr Leslie as his successor in the chair of mathematics was opposed at the time by a majority of the presbytery of Edinburgh, and made the subject of very angry discussion, as well in various publications as in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. From both these fields of contention the opponents of Mr Leslie retired discomfited, and, in the opinion, we believe, of many of the lookers on, disgraced. Amongst the heaviest blows they had to sustain were those that parted from the hand of Mr Playfair. He first addressed a Letter to the Lord Provost, in which, after asserting, with infinite spirit and freedom, the dignity of the science in question, he openly im-pu tes the new-sprung zeal for orthodoxy, which had prompted the attack on Mr Leslie, to a wish or design on the part of some of the clergymen of Edinburgh to obtain for themselves a number of the chairs in that university, which had hitherto afforded sufficient occupation to the undistracted industry of laymen: And when this denunciation brought upon him a series of acrimonious and unhandsome attacks, he replied to them all in a pamphlet of greater bulk, written in a style of which the high polish and elegance[7:18:46] only serve to give a keener edge to the unsparing severity of the exposures which it conveys.^[2. This piece is entitled Letter to the Author of the Examination of Mr Stewart’s Short Statement of Facts relative to the Election of Professor Leslie, 8vo, Edin. 180G∙ It has not been reprinted in the collection of his works. ] We do not know, indeed, where to find a more perfect model of polemical or controversial writing; and, much as it was to be regretted that an occasion should have arisen for employing such a pen and such a mind as Mr Playfair’s on any temporary or personal theme, it is impossible not toadmire the extraordinary talent and vigour with which, when the occasion did arrive, he could turn talents, exercised in far other studies, to the purposes suggested by the emergency.

In 1807 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and soon afterwards presented to that learned body his Lithological Survey of Schehallien. In 1809 he contributed to the Edinburgh Transactions an excellent paper on Solids of the greatest Attraction, and in 1812 another on the Progress of Heat in Spherical Bodies. .

In 1814 he published, in two volumes 8vo, for the use of his class, an elementary work of great value, under the title of Outlines of Natural Philosophy. For some years before this, he had been much occupied in digesting the plan and collecting the materials for a greatly enlarged edition of his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory; with a view to which, he had not only carefully perused and extracted a vast body of voyages and travels, but had made various journeys, and very minutely examined almost all the places in the British dominions the structure of which promised to throw any light on the subject of his researches. No part of the work, however, was actually written, when the preparation for it was suspended by his being induced to draw up for this publication an introductory Dissertation on the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science; a treatise which, though its author had written nothing else, would itself suffice to carry down his name with distinction to the latest posterity. The soundness of judgment, the beauty of the writing, the extent of knowledge, the candour and precision of the estimates of character, and the noble spirit of liberality and generous admiration for genius which breathes throughout the whole performance, give it an attraction which is rarely to be found in works of the same erudition, and render it not only one of the most instructive, but one of the most interesting publications that philosophy has ever bestowed on the world.

In 1815 he drew up for the Royal Society of Edinburgh a very interesting Memoir of his distinguished predecessor Dr John Robison, a philosopher in whose early life there was more adventure, and in his later days more political prejudice, than we usually find to diversify the history of men of science. Nothing can be more spirited and interesting than Mr Playfair’s account of the former; nothing more manly and tender than his reluctant but decided protestation against the excesses of the latter.

After the general peace in 1815 had at last opened the Continent to British inquirers, Mr Playfair, at the age of sixty-eight, undertook a long journey through France and Switzerland into Italy, and did not return for a period of nearly eighteen months. His principal attention was directed to the mineralogical and geological phenomena of the different regions which he visited; and he made many notes with a view to the great object which he was not destined to accomplish, namely, the extension and new-modelling of his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory. Every object of liberal curiosity, however, had for him an attraction as fresh as in his earliest youth; and the social simplicity and benevolence of his character and manners insured him a favourable reception in every new society to which he was introduced.

On his return from this expedition, he employed himself chiefly in preparing the Second Part of the Dissertation to which we have alluded; and he also drew up a Memoir on the Naval Tactics of Mr Clerk of Eldin, which was published after his death in the Philosophical Transactions, though only a fragment of a projected life of Mr Clerk, which he did not live to complete. His health had been occasionally broken for several years by the recurrence of a painful affection of the bladder, which appeared with increased severity in the early part of 1819, but was so far got under as to enable him to complete his course of lectures in the spring. It returned, however, in a still more distressing form in the summer, and at last put a period to his life on the 19th of July. Though suffering great pain during the last part of his confinement, he retained not only his intellectual faculties quite unimpaired, but also the serenity and mildness of his spirit, and occupied himself till within a few days of his death in correcting the proofsheets of the Dissertation, the printing of the Second Part of which had commenced some time before his last illness.^[3. Besides the Dissertation, Mr Playfair contributed the valuable biographical account of Aepinus, and the still more valuable article on Physical Astronomy. ]

Before concluding these notices of Mr Playfair’s scientific and literary labours, we have still to mention, that, from the year 1804, he was a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review; and that though most of his articles were of a scientific description, he occasionally diverged into the field of general literature, or indulged in the refinements of metaphysical speculation. Many of his scientific articles attracted great attention on the Continent as well as at home; and several of them are written with a force and beauty that might well entitle them to a higher place than the pages of a periodical publication. There is no general account of the great facts and principles of astronomy so clear, and comprehensive, and exact, nor half so beautiful or majestic in the writing, as his account of Laplace’s Mécanique Celeste, in the eleventh volume of the publication just mentioned.

In this brief sketch of the events of Mr Playfair’s life, we have purposely omitted any general account, either of his personal character, or of the distinguishing features of his intellectual powers and habits; thinking it better to give those by themselves, in the words in which they were recorded, to the satisfaction, we believe, of most of those who knew him intimately, in a periodical journal whereirt they appeared a short time after his death. The portrait there given has been pronounced by one of the earliest and most illustrious of his surviving friends, “a faithful and perfect resemblance ;”^[4. Letter from Mr Dugald Stewart to Dr Playfair, in the Appendix to the Biographical Account of Professor Playfair, prefixed to the collection of his works, published at Edinburgh in 1822, in 4 vols. 8vo. ] and has accordingly' been allowed a place in the prefatory memoir which his nephew has prefixed to the collection of his works.

“It has struck many people, we believe, as very extraordinary, that so eminent a person as Mr Playfair should have been allowed to sink into his grave in the midst of us, without calling forth almost so much as an attempt to commemorate his merit, even in a common newspaper; and that the death of a man so celebrated and so beloved, and, at the same time, so closely connected with many who could well appreciate and suitably describe his excellencies, should be left to the brief and ordinary notice of the daily obituary. No event of the kind certainly ever excited more general sympathy; and no individual, we are persuaded, will be longer or more affectionately remembered by all the classes of his fellow-citizens; and yet it is to these very circumstances[7:18:47] that we must look for an explanation of the apparent neglect by which his memory has been followed. His humbler admirers have been deterred from expressing their sentiments by a natural feeling of unwillingness to encroach on the privilege of those whom a nearer approach to his person and talents rendered it more worthy to speak of them; whilst the learned and eloquent amongst his friends have trusted to each other for the performance of a task which they could not but feel to be painful in itself, and not a little difficult to perform as it ought to be; or perhaps have reserved for some more solemn occasion that tribute for which the public impatience is already at its height.

“We beg leave to assure our readers, that it is merely from anxiety to do something to gratify this natural impatience that we presume to enter at all upon a subject to which we are perfectly aware that we are incapable of doing justice; for of Mr Playfair’s scientific attainments, of his proficiency in those studies to which he was peculiarly devoted, we are but slenderly qualified to judge. Rut we believe we hazard nothing in saying that he was one of the most learned mathematicians of his age, and among the first, if not the very first, who introduced the beautiful discoveries of the later continental geometers to the knowledge of his countrymen; and gave their just value and true place, in the scheme of European knowledge, to those important improvements by which the whole aspect of the abstract sciences has been renovated since the days of our illustrious Newton. If he did not signalize himself by any brilliant or original invention, he must, at least, be allowed to have been a most generous and intelligent judge of the achievements of others; as well as the most eloquent expounder of that great and magnificent system of knowledge which has been gradually evolved by the successive labours of so many gifted individuals. He possessed, indeed, in the highest degree, all the characteristics both of a fine and a powerful understanding; at once penetrating and vigilant, but more distinguished, perhaps, for the caution and sureness of its march, than for the brilliancy or rapidity of its movements; and guided and adorned through all its progress by the most genuine enthusiasm for all that is grand, and the justest taste for all that is beautiful, in the truth or the intellectual energy with which he was habitually conversant.

“Towhat account these rare qualities might have been turned, and what more brilliant or lasting fruits they might have produced, if his whole life had been dedicated to the solitary cultivation of science, it is not for us to conjecture; but it cannot be doubted that they added incalculably to his eminence and utility as a teacher, both by enabling him to direct his pupils to the most simple and luminous methods of inquiry, and to imbue their minds, from the very commencement of the study, with that fine relish for the truths it disclosed, and that high sense of the majesty with which they were invested, that predominated in his own bosom. Whilst he left nothing unexplained or unreduced to its proper place in the system, he took care that they should never be perplexed by petty difficulties, or bewildered in useless details, and formed them betimes to that clear, masculine, and direct method of investigation by which, with the least labour, the greatest advances might be accomplished.

“Mr Playfair, however, was not merely a teacher; and has fortunately left behind him a variety of works, from which other generations may be enabled to judge of some of those qualifications which so powerfully recommended and endeared him to his contemporaries. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that so much of his time, and so large a proportion of his publications, should have been devoted to the subjects of the Indian Astronomy, and the Huttonian Theory of the Earth. For though nothing can be more beautifulor instructive thanhisspeculationsonthosecurious topics, it cannot be dissembled that their results are less conclusive and satisfactory than might have been desired; and that his doctrines, from the very nature of the subjects, are more questionable than we believe they could possibly have been on any other topic in the whole circle of the sciences. To the first, indeed, he came under the great disadvantage of being unacquainted with the eastern tongues, and without the means of judging of the authenticity of the documents which he was obliged to assume as the elements of his reasonings; and as to the other, though he ended, we believe, with being a very able and skilful mineralogist, we think it is now generally admitted that that science does not yet afford sufficient materials for any positive conclusion, and that all attempts to establish a theory of the earth must, for many years to come, be regarded as premature. Though it is impossible, therefore, to think too highly of the ingenuity, the vigour, and the eloquence of those publications, we are of opinion that a juster estimate of Mr Playfair’s talent, and a truer picture of his genius and understanding, is to be found in his other writings; in the papers, both biographical and scientific, with which he has enriched the Transactions of our Royal Society; his account of Laplace, and other articles which he is understood to have contributed to the Edinburgh Review; the Outlines of his Lectures on Natural Philosophy; and, above all, his Introductory Discourse to the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with the final correction of which he was occupied up to the last moments that the progress of his disease allowed him to dedicate to any intellectual exertion.

“With reference to these works, we do not think we are influenced by any national, or other partiality, when we say that he was certainly one of the best writers of his age; and even that we do not now recollect any one of his contemporaries who was so great a master of composition. There is a certain mellowness and richness about his style, which adorns without disguising the weight and nervousness, which is itsother great characteristic; a sedate gracefulness and manly simplicity in the more level passages, and a mild majesty and considerate enthusiasm where he rises above them, of which we scarcely know where to find any other example. There is great equability, too, and sustained force, in every part of his writings. He never exhausts himself in flashes and epigrams, nor languishes into tameness and insipidity; at first sight you would say that plainness and good sense were the predominating qualities, but by and by this simplicity is enriched with the delicate and vivid colours of a fine imagination, the free and forcible touches of a most powerful intellect, and the lights and shaeds of an unerring and harmonizing taste. In comparing it with the styles of his most celebrated contemporaries, we would say that it was more purely and peculiarly a written style, and, therefore, rejected those ornaments that more properly belong to oratory. It had no impetuosity, hurry, or vehemence,—no bursts or sudden turns or abruptions, like that of Burke; and though eminently smooth and melodious, it was not modulated to an uniform system of solemn declamation like that of Johnson; nor spread out in the richer and more voluminous elocution of Stewart; nor still less broken into that patchwork of scholastic pedantry and conversational smartness which has found its admirers in Gibbon. It is a style, in short, of great freedom, force, and beauty; but the deliberate style of a man of thought and of learning, and neither that of a wit throwing out his extempores with an affectation of careless grace, nor of a rhetorician thinking more of his manner than his matter, and determined to be admired for his expression, whatever may be the fate of his sentiments.

“His habits of composition, as we have understood, were [7:18:48]not perhaps exactly what might have been expected from their results. He wrote rather slowly, and his first sketches were often very slight and imperfect, like the rude chalking for a masterly picture. His chief effort and greatest pleasure was in their revisal and correction; and there were no limits to the improvement which resulted from this application. It was not the style merely, or indeed chiefly, that gained by it; the whole reasoning, and sentiment, and illustration, were enlarged and new-modelled in the course of it, and a naked outline became gradually informed with life, colour, and expression, It was not at all like the common finishing and polishing to which careful authors generally subject the first draught of their compositions, nor even like the fastidious and tentative alterations with which some more anxious writers assay their choicer passages. It was, in fact, the great filling in of the picture, the working up of the figured weft on the naked and meagre woof that had been stretched to receive it; and the singular thing in his case was, not only that he left this most material part of his work to be performed after the whole outline had been finished, but that he could proceed with it to an indefinite extent, and enrich and improve as long as he thought fit, without any risk either of destroying the proportions of that outline, or injuring the harmony and unity of the design. He was perfectly aware, too, of the possession of this extraordinary power; and it was partly, we presume, in consequence of this consciousness that he was not only at all times ready to go on with any work in which he was engaged, without waiting for favourable moments or hours of greater alacrity, but that he never felt any of those doubts and misgivings as to his being able to get creditably through with his undertaking, to which we believe most authors are occasionally liable. As he never wrote upon any subject of which he was not perfectly master, he was secure against all blunders in the substance of what he had to say; and felt quite assured, that if he was only allowed time enough, he should finally come to say it in the very best way of which he was capable. He had no anxiety, therefore, either in undertaking or proceeding with his tasks; and intermitted and resumed them at his convenience, with the comfortable certainty, that all the time he bestowed on them was turned to good account, and that what was left imperfect at one sitting might be finished with equal ease and advantage at another. Being thus perfectly sure both of his end and his means, he experienced, in the course of his compositions, none of that little fever of the spirits with which that operation is so apt to be accompanied. He had no capricious visitings of fancy, which it was necessary to fix upon the spot or to lose for ever; no casual inspiration to invoke and to wait for; no transitory and evanescent lights to catch before they faded. All that was in his mind was subject to his control, and amenable to his call, though it might not obey at the moment; and whilst his taste was so sure, that he was in no danger of overworking anything that he had designed, all his thoughts and sentiments had that unity and congruity, that they fell almost spontaneously into harmony and order; and the last added, incorporated, and assimilated with the first, as if they had sprung simultaneously from the same happy conception.

“But we need dwell no longer on qualities that maybe gathered hereafter from the works he has left behind him. They who lived with him mourn the most for those which will be traced in no such memorial; and prize far above those talents which gained him his high name in philosophy, that personal character which endeared him to his friends, and shed a grace and a dignity over all the society in which he moved. The same admirable taste which is conspicuous in his writings, or rather the higher principles from which that taste was but an emanation, spread a similar charm over his whole life and conversation, and gave to the most learned philosopher of his day the manners and deportment of the most perfect gentleman. Nor was this in him the result merely of good sense and good temper, assisted by an early familiarity with good company,' and a consequent knowledge of his own place and that of all around him. His good breeding was of a higher descent; and his powers of pleasing rested on something better than mere companionable qualities. With ⅛c greatest kindness and generosity of nature, he united the most manly firmness, and the highest principles of honour; and the most cheerful and social dispositions, with the gentlest and steadiest affections. Towards women he had always the most chivalrous feelings of regard and attention, and was, beyond almost all men, acceptable and agreeable in their society, though without the least levity or pretension unbecoming his age or condition; and such, indeed, was the fascination of the perfect simplicity and mildness of his manners, that the same tone and deportment seemed i equally appropriate in all societies, and enabled him to de- ; light the young and the gay with the same sort of conversation which instructed the learned and the grave. There never, indeed, was a man of learning and talent who appeared in society so perfectly free from all sorts of pretension or notion of his own importance, or so little solicitous to distinguish himself, or so sincerely willing to give place to every one else. Even upon subjects which he had thoroughly studied, he was never in the least impatient to speak, and spoke at all times without any tone of authority; whilst, so far from wishing to set off what he had to say by any brilliancy or emphasis of expression, it seemed generally as if he had studied to disguise the weight and originality of his thoughts under the plainest form of speech and the most quiet and indifferent manner; so that the profoundest remarks and subtlest observations were often dropped, not only without any solicitude that their value should be observed, but without any apparent consciousness that they possessed any. Though the most social of human beings, and the most disposed to encourage and sympathise with the gaiety and joviality of others, his own spirits were in general rather cheerful than gay, or at least never rose to any turbulence or tumult of merriment; and whilst he would listen with the kindest indulgence to the more extravagant sallies of his younger friends, and prompt them by the heartiest approbation, his own satisfaction might generally be traced in a slow and temperate smile, gradually mantling over his benevolent and intelligent features, and lighting up the countenance of the sage with the expression of the mildest and most genuine philanthropy. It was wonderful, indeed, considering the measure of his own intellect, and the rigid and undeviating propriety of his own conduct, how tolerant he was of the defects and errors of other men. He was too indulgent, in truth, and favourable to his friends, and made a kind and liberal allowance for the faults of all mankind; except only faults of baseness or of cruelty, against which he never failed to manifest the most open scorn and detestation. Independently, in short, of his high attainments, Mr Playfair was one of the most amiable and estimable of men; delightful in his manners, inflexible in his principles, and generous in his affections, he had all that could charm in society or attach in private; and whilst his friends enjoyed the free and unstudied conversation of an easy and intelligent associate, they had at all times the proud and inward assurance that he was a being upon whose perfect honour and generosity they might rely with the-most implicit confidence, in life and in death, 1 —and of whom it was equally impossible that, under any circumstances, he should ever perform a mean, a selfish, or a questionable action, as that his body should cease to gravitate or his soul to live.

“If we do not greatly deceive ourselves, there is nothing here of exaggeration or partial feeling, and nothing with [7:18:49]which an indifferent and honest chronicler would not concur. Nor is it altogether idle to have dwelt so long on the personal character of this distinguished individual. For we are ourselves persuaded, that this personal character has done almost as much for the cause of science and philosophy amongst us as the great talents and attainments with which it was combined; and has contributed in a very eminent degree to give to the better society of Edinburgh that tone of intelligence and liberality by which it is so honourably distinguished. It is not a little advantageous to philosophy that it is in fashion; and it is still more advantageous, perhaps, to the society which is led to confer on it this apparently trivial distinction. It is a great thing for the country at large,—for its happiness, its prosperity, and its renown,—that the upper and influencing part of its population should be made familiar, even in its untasked and social hours, with sound and liberal information, and be taught to know and respect those who have distinguished themselves for great intellectual attainments. Nor is it, after all, a slight or despicable reward for a man of genius to be received with honour in the highest and most elegant society around him, and to receive in his living person that homage and applause which is too often reserved for his memory. Now, those desirable ends can never be effectually accomplished, unless the manners of our leading philosophers are agreeable, and their personal habits and dispositions engaging and amiable. From the time of Hume and Robertson, we have been fortunate in Edinburgh in possessing a succession of distinguished men, who have kept up this salutary connection between the learned and the fashionable world; but there never, perhaps, was any one who contributed so powerfully to confirm and extend it, and that in times when it was peculiarly difficult, as the lamented individual of whom we are now speaking; and they who have had the best opportunity to observe how superior the society of Edinburgh is to that of most other places of the same size, and how much of that superiority is owing to the cordial combination of the two aristocracies of rank and of letters (of both of which it happens to be the chief provincial seat), will be best able to judge of the importance of the service he has thus rendered to its inhabitants, and through them, and by their example, to all the rest of the country.” (p. p.)