360 JAMES WATT. 



establishment. He had had as protectors, Adam Smith, 

 author of the celebrated work on The Wealth of Nations ; 

 Black, whose discoveries relative to latent heat and car- 

 bonate of lime must place him in a distinguished rank 

 among the most eminent chemists of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury ; Robert Simson, the celebrated restorer of the most 

 important treatises by ancient geometers. These great 

 men, however, thought at first that they had only deliv- 

 ered a good, zealous, and amiable workman from the 

 overbearing corporations ; but they soon after recog- 

 nized in him a first-rate man, and bestowed on him their 

 warmest friendship. The students in the University 

 also esteemed it an honour to be admitted into Watt's 

 intimacy. In short, his shop, yes, Gentlemen, his shop ! 

 became a sort of academy, where the illustrious men of 

 Glasgow used to go to discuss the most delicate questions 

 of art, of science, and of literature. I would not dare, I 

 own, to pronounce what share this young workman of 

 one and twenty took in these learned circles, if I could 

 not depend on an unpublished paper by the most illus- 

 trious of the editors of the British Encyclopedia. 



Robison says : " Although still a student, I had the 

 vanity to think myself sufficiently advanced in my 

 favourite subjects, mechanics and physics, when I was 

 introduced to Watt ; and I will acknowledge that I was 

 not slightly mortified when I perceived how far superior 



the young workman was to me Whenever any 



difficulty arrested us in the University, we used to run to 

 our workman. When once excited, any subject became 

 for him a text for serious study and discoveries. He 

 never let go his hold, until he had entirely cleared up 

 the proposed question ; he either reduced it to nought, or 

 obtained from it some net and substantial result 



