360 JAMES WATT. 
establishment. He had had as protectors, Adam Smith, 
author of the celebrated work on Zhe 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not depend on an unpublished paper by the most, illus- 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..... 
