420 MEMOIR OF THE LATE DR THOMAS CHARLES HOPE. 
the 10th of October of the same year; and thus a new field was opened to his 
ambition. 
It was no easy task with which young Hope had to grapple. The Glasgow 
Lectureship had been successively held by men of consummate abilities, and 
high chemical acquirements. The immediate predecessors of Dr Irvine, had 
been Dr Ropison, Dr Buack, and Dr CuLLEN; men whose names will ever stand 
conspicuous in the science of Scotland. Instead of acting as a discouragement, 
this consideration only stimulated Dr Horr to make every effort to prove himself 
no unworthy successor of these eminent teachers of chemical science. With 
the general doctrines of chemistry he was well acquainted; he possessed 
ingenuity in devising illustrative experiments, and a rare delicacy in chemical 
manipulation. Yet, as he has confessed to the writer of this memoir, from the 
shortness of the period for preparation, the scantiness of his apparatus, and the 
utter want of assistance in his laboratory, he regarded his first course of chemistry 
as very imperfect. But the novelty of his mode of teaching, and the neatness 
of his experiments, seem to have won the approbation of his auditory. 
He was, at that period, a strenuous supporter of the then generally received 
doctrines of Srani—that inflammable bodies owed that quality to the presence ofa 
principle which was termed phlogiston, and of course taught that doctrine in 
this his first course of lectures. But his conversion to the Lavoiserian or French 
theory of chemistry was at hand. 
It is generally known, that from 1777, Lavoisier had doubted the existence 
of such a principle as phlogiston, and in 1785 proposed the antiphlogistic theory, 
supported by such facts and decisive experiments, that his views were speedily 
adopted by his own countrymen ; though for a considerable time afterwards, they 
were not received in Britain. 
The late Sir James Hatt happened to pass the winter of 1787 in Paris, and 
was much in the society of Lavoisier, who showed great anxiety to make a con- 
vert of Sir James, and, through him, to spread his doctrines among British 
chemists. For this purpose he not only gave Sir James free access to his papers. 
but exhibited to him several verv important experiments, even before they had 
been communicated to the Academy of Sciences, or made known to the chemical 
world in general. Sir James Hatz returned to Scotland in the autumn of 1787, well 
versed in the new doctrines, of which he became an able and zealous propagator. 
_He had many long discussions on this subject with Dr Horr, who was then a 
keen supporter of the phlogistic hypothesis, but was soon convinced by the argu- 
ments and facts communicated by his friend ; and next winter he taught them 
to his class, the first occasion on which the Lavoiserian doctrines were introduced 
in a public course of lectures in Great Britain. 
In the beginning of 1783 Dr Horr was admitted as a Fellow of this Society ; 
and soon after he resolved to pass the summer vacation in Paris. 
