482 . SIMSON. 



Hutcheson, and Adam Smith, successively teachers of 

 moral philosophy ; Cullen, the celebrated physician ; 

 Black, the great founder of modern chemistry all 

 taught while Simson flourished ; Millar only became 

 professor of law at the close of the brilliant period 

 now referred to, and Robison succeeded Black in 1761, 

 soon after Simson's resignation. 



But a teacher's influence is nothing in surrounding 

 himself with illustrious colleagues: of great pupils 

 he may more easily obtain a following. Of these, 

 Dr. Simson had some whose names are still honoured 

 among mathematicians. Williamson, afterwards his 

 assistant in the class, a man of great promise, whose 

 early death at the Factory of Lisbon, to which he was 

 chaplain, alone prevented him from following with 

 distinction his master's footsteps ; Scott, preceptor to 

 George III. when Prince of Wales, afterwards a Com- 

 missioner of Excise in London, perhaps the most 

 accomplished of all amateur mathematicians who 

 never gave their works to the world ; Traill, author 

 of the excellent elementary treatise of algebra, of a 

 very learned and exceedingly ill-written, indeed, hardly 

 readable, life of his friend and teacher, but a man of 

 great capacity for science, entirely extinguished, to- 

 gether with his taste for its pursuits (as Professor 

 Playfair used to lament), by the sinecure emoluments 

 of the Irish Church ; but above all, Matthew Stewart, 

 Simson's favourite pupil, and whose suggestions, and 

 indeed contributions, he records in his works with 

 appropriate eulogy, as he does on one occasion an in- 

 genious theorem of Traill these were among his 

 scholars, and were, with Robison, the most dis- 

 tinguished of their number. His method of lecturing 



