SIMSON. 513 



continued for ten years in the pursuit of his favourite 

 studies, and the enjoyment of the same social intercourse 

 as before. His health, which through his long life had 

 been unbroken, remained entire till within a few weeks 

 of its close, and he died on the 1 st of October, 1 768, 

 having almost completed his eighty-first year. 



He is represented to have been of a calm and pleas- 

 ing presence, of a portly figure, of easy and not un- 

 graceful manners. A portrait of him in the college 

 library remains, and is said to do him justice. His pupil, 

 Dr. Moore, the Greek professor, and author of the cele- 

 brated Grammar, also an excellent mathematician and 

 great admirer of the ancient geometry, wrote the in- 

 scription which appears under it, marking its author's 

 own taste in more ways than one : 



" Geometriam sub tyranno barbaro, saeva servitute, diu lan- 

 guentem, vindicavit unus." 



His character was lofty and pure : nothing could ex- 

 ceed his love of justice, and dislike of anything sordid or 

 low ; nor could he ever bear to hear men reviling one 

 another, and, least of all, speaking evil of the absent or 

 the dead. In this he closely resembled his celebrated 

 pupil Mr. Watt. His religious as well as moral feel- 

 ings were strong, and they were habitual. No one in his 

 presence ever ventured on the least irreverent or inde- 

 corous allusion ; and we find the periods of his geome- 

 trical discoveries mentioned with the date and the place, 

 and generally an addition of " Deo" or " Christo laus," 

 an example of which we have above presented. 



He never was married. Of his brothers, one, 

 Thomas, was Professor of Medicine at St. Andrew's, 

 and author of an ingenious and original work on the 

 Brain ; his son succeeded him as professor. Another 



2 L 



