284 Biographical Account of DR WILSON y 



the University, together with Messrs FOULIS, to print splendid 

 editions of the Greek classics, he, with great alacrity, undertook 

 to execute new types, upon a model highly improved. This he 

 accomplished, at an expence of time and labour which could not 

 be recompensed by any profits arising from the sale of the types 

 themselves. Such disinterested zeal for the honour of the Uni- 

 versity Press, was, however, upon this occasion, so well under- 

 stood, as to induce the University, in the preface to the folio HO- 

 MER, to mention Mr WILSON in terms as honourable to him as 

 they were just. 



Though he thus continued to prosecute letter-founding as 

 his chief business, yet, from his great temperance, domestic ha- 

 bits, and activity, he was enabled now and then to command in- 

 tervals of leisure, which he never failed to fill up by some useful 

 or ingenious employment. One of these, in which he took great 

 delight, was the constructing of reflecting telescopes, an art 

 which he cultivated with unwearied attention, and in the end 

 with much success. 



Among the more advanced students, who, in the years 1748 

 and 1749, attended the lectures on Divinity in the University, 

 was Mr THOMAS MELVILL, so well knwn by his mathematical ta- 

 lents, and by those fine specimens of genius which are to be 

 found in his posthumous papers, published in the second volume 

 of the Edinburgh Essays, Physical and Literary. With this 

 young person Mr WILSON then lived in the closest intimacy. 

 Of several philosophical schemes which occurred to them in their 

 social hours, Mr WILSON proposed one, which was to explore the 

 temperature of the atmosphere hi the higher regions, by raising 

 a number of paper kites, one above another, upon the same line, 

 with thermometers appended to those that were to be most 

 elevated. Though they expected, in general, that kites thus 

 connected might be raised to an unusual height, still they were 



