biographical Sketch of the late Dug aid Stezmrt, Esq. 199 



some elementary and fundamental questions which divided the 

 opinions of philosophers in the eighteenth century, Mr Stew- 

 art regarded it as so far a continuation of his great plan, that 

 he recommends his younger readers to peruse it after they 

 have completed the first volume of his Philosophy of the Hu- 

 man Mind. About a year after the death of his son, Mr 

 Stewart resigned the Moral Philosophy Chair, and was re-ap- 

 pointed joint professor along with Dr Thomas Brown. By 

 this arrangement, which his appointment from Government aU 

 lowed him to effect, he was enabled to retire from the duties of 

 active life, and to pursue in retirement those philosophical in- 

 quiries, of which he had yet published but a small part. He 

 therefore quitted Edinburgh, and removed with his family to 

 Kinneil House, near Borrostownness, a seat of the Duke of 

 Hamilton, and about twenty miles from Edinburgh. 



Although it was on Mr Stewart's recommendation that Dr 

 Brown was raised to the Chair of Moral Philosophy, yet the 

 appointment did not prove to him a source of unmixed satis- 

 faction. The fine poetical imagination of Dr Brown, the 

 quickness of his apprehension, and the acuteness and ingenuity 

 of his argument, were qualities but little suited to that patient 

 and continuous research which the phenomena of the mind so 

 particularly demand. He accordingly composed his lectures 

 with the same rapidity that he would have done a poem, and 

 chiefly from the resources of his own highly gifted but excited 

 mind. Difficulties which had appalled the stoutest intellects, 

 yielded to his bold analysis, and, despising the patient formali- 

 ties of a siege, he entered the temple of pneumatology by 

 storm. When Mr Stewart was apprised that his own favou- 

 rite and best founded opinions were controverted from the very 

 chair which he had scarcely quitted ; that the doctrines of his 

 revered friend and master (Dr Reid) were assailed with severe 

 and not very respectful animadversions ; and that views even 

 of a doubtful tendency were freely expounded by his inge- 

 nious colleague, his feelings were strongly roused ; and though 

 they were long suppressed by the peculiar circumstances of 

 his situation, yet he has given them full expression in a very 

 interesting note in the third volume of his Elements, which is 

 alike remarkable for the severity and delicacy of its reproof. 

 Upon the death of Dr Brown, on the 2d of April 1280, Mr 



