EARLY LIFE. 79 



the ordinary affairs of life. , He was a person 

 whose opinions on every subject 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 

 exception 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 doctrine of causticity, which that person ex- 

 plained 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 ignorance 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. 



Against this Meyer he had no prejudice of a national 

 kind whatever. One subject of his constant praise 

 was Magroff, whom he held up as a great example 

 of skilful and judicious analytical investigation, and 

 placing him greatly above Potts. Of Bergman he had 

 by no means a great admiration, but Magroff was less 



