22 BLACK. 



and as a teacher followed him into all the ordinary affairs 

 of life. He was a person whose opinions on every sub- 

 ject were marked by calmness and sagacity, wholly free 

 from both passion and prejudice, while affectation was 

 only known to him from the comedies he might have 

 read. His temper in all the circumstances of life was 

 unruffled. This was perceived in his lectures when he 

 had occasion to mention any narrow prejudice or any 

 unworthy proceeding of other philosophers. One ex- 

 ception there certainly was, possibly the only one in 

 his life ; he seemed to have felt hurt at the objections 

 urged by a German chemist called Meyer to his doc- 

 trine of causticity, which that person explained by 

 supposing an acid, called by him acidum pingue^ to 

 be the cause of alkaline mildness. The unsparing 

 severity of the lecture in which Black exposed the ig- 

 norance and dogmatism of this foolish reasoner cannot 

 well be forgotten by his hearers, who both wondered 

 that so ill-matched an antagonist should have succeeded 

 where so many crosses had failed in discomposing the 

 sage, and observed how well fitted he was, should 

 occasion be offered, for a kind of exertion exceedingly 

 different from all the efforts that at other times he was 

 wont to make. 



The soundness of his judgment on all matters, whe- 

 ther of literature or of a more ordinary description, 

 was described by Adam Smith, who said, he " had less 

 nonsense in his head than any man living." The ele- 

 gance of his taste, which has been observed upon as 

 shown in his lectures, was also seen in the efforts of 

 his pencil, which Professor Kobison compares to that 

 of Woollett. The neatness of his manipulations was 

 not confined to his experiments when investigating or 

 when lecturing. I have heard one who happened to 

 see him at his toilette describe the operations as per- 

 formed with exquisite neatness by a number of contri- 

 vances happily adapted to the saving of trouble and 

 avoiding uneasiness. His perfect equanimity has been 





