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Proceedings oj ilic Pioyal Society 
paper by Dr Beattie on the Sixth Book of Virgil’s Euclid, read in 
1787. Altogether, however, this class or section of the Society did 
not command the success which attended the physical. As time 
went on, there seemed to be a want of material, and the papers 
dwindled down to somewhat pedantic dissertations on grammar, on 
moods of verbs, on pronouns, on the Greek letter sigma, on the 
Greek Ae, on the necessity for defining synonymous terms, and 
topics of this class, which although valued by and probably interest- 
ing to a limited class of philologists, were not animated in them- 
selves, nor likely to excite enthusiasm on a general audience. I was 
quite prepared, accordingly, to find that the result occurred which 
circumstances foreshadowed. The following entries occur in the 
Minutes : — 
“ 1793. — There being no business for the stated days of meeting 
in April, June, July, and November, no meetings were then held.” 
The same entry occurs in 1794; and the Literary class thus 
practically perished of inanition ten years after the foundation of 
the Society; and in 1808 the minute-book of that class ceases 
altogether. There has been no separate Literary class since the new 
rules passed in 1811. 
It is not difficult to trace the causes which led to the continuance 
of this. In 1783 there had been a wave of literary revival passing 
over Scotland ever since the middle of the century, and our prose 
writers, Hume, Eobertson, Blair, and others of that circle, including 
specially Henry Mackenzie, had raised a spirit of enthusiasm for 
such pursuits. But such fashions rapidly change. The immense 
effects produced on human thought by the French Revolution gave 
a fresh impulse and a new direction to literary taste. New outlets, 
more profitable than the supply of our Transactions, soon afterwards 
opened to the literary world. The Edmhurgh and Quarterly 
Reviews ; Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Campbell in- 
augurated a new era, under which the old ways became unfashion- 
able, and the old taste obsolete. Matters stood quite differently 
with the Physical class. In that opinions may grow obsolete, but 
the theme never. Fresh ground is always to be found. So men 
turned out with alacrity to hear about the Vulcanists and Neptunists, 
or latent heat or the latest geometrical problem, who would not stir 
from their homes to be told the use of a subjunctive, or Dr Parr’s 
derivation of the word “ suhlimisT 
