BLACK. 349 



by which he had formerly made them, once more per- 

 formed with his own hands. 



The qualities which distinguished him as an inquirer 

 and as a teacher followed him into all 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 ex- 

 ception 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 explained 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 ig- 

 norance 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. 



The soundness of his judgment on all matters, 

 whether of literature or of a more ordinary description, 

 was described by Adam Smith, who said, he "had 

 less nonsense in his head than any man living/* The 

 elegance of his taste, which has been observed upon as 



