132 SIMSOIST. 



It happened that no lecture or teaching of any kind 

 was given by the professor who filled the mathematical 

 chair, receiving its emoluments, and neglecting its 

 duties, when Simson went to the University. But 

 curiosity, a propensity ever strong in his nature through 

 his whole life, made him wish to see what the science 

 was, and he borrowed from a friend a copy of Euclid, 

 the work which he was destined afterwards to give 

 forth in a perfection that has made all other editions 

 of that great classic be forgotten. Over the elements 

 of the science he pored assiduously and alone, with 

 only the aid of suggestions occasionally given by a 

 student some years older than himself; and the study 

 falling in with his genius and his taste, he soon made 

 himself master of the first six books, comprising plain 

 geometry, and the eleventh and twelfth, treating of 

 solids, those at least which are bounded by planes or 

 by circular arches. But he did not neglect the other 

 branches of science taught at the College ; and he also 

 gave his attention to the literary parts of education, 

 so well mastering the Latin and Greek languages as to 

 become a learned and accurate scholar. It was in the 

 mathematics, however, that he chiefly excelled ; and 

 his accomplishments in that science becoming known 

 to the professorial body (the Senatus Academicus), 

 in whom is vested the patronage of the mathematical 

 chair, and an early vacancy being foreseen, they offered 

 him the succession in that event. Being then in his 

 twenty-second year, he modestly declined to undertake 

 so important a charge, but requested a year's delay, 

 during which he might repair to London, and become 

 more familiar with the science and its cultivators. We 

 may hence perceive that there could then have been 

 no one at all versed in the mathematics at Glasgow ; 

 and the allowing so important a branch of science to 

 remain for so many years untaught because the teacher 

 who received the ample emoluments of the chair either 

 could not or would not perform its duties, affords a 



