D/UGALD S/TEWART was born in the old college buildings, Edinburgh, on November 22, 1753.His father was Dr.Matthew Stewart, at one time minister at Roseneath, and afterwards successor to Maclaurin in the mathematical chair in Edinburgh, and still known as one of those British mathematicians, who were applying, with great skill and beauty, the geometrical method, while the continental mathematicians were far outstripping them by seizing on the more powerful instrument of the calculus.His mother was the daughter of an Edinburgh writer to the signet.He was thus connected on the part of his father (and also of his grandfather, who had been minister of Rothesay), with the Presbyterian ministry, and on the part of his mother with the Edinburgh lawyers, -- the two classes which, next to the heritors, held the most influential position in Scotland.
Dugald was a feeble and delicate infant.He spent his boyish years partly in Edinburgh, and partly in the maternal mansion-house of Catrine, which I remember as being, when Ipaid pilgrimage thither many years ago, a whitewashed, broad-faced, common-place old house, situated very pleasantly in what Wordsworth calls expressively the "holms of bonnie Ayr," but unpleasantly near a cotton-mill and a thriving village, which, as they rose about 1792, destroyed to Stewart the charms of the place as a residence.Stewart entered, at the age of eight, the High School of Edinburgh, where he had, in the latter years of his attendance, Dr.
Adam for his instructor, and where he was distinguished for the elegance of his translations, and early acquired that love for the prose and poetical works of ancient Rome which continued with him through life.He entered Edinburgh College in the session 1765-66; that is, in his thirteenth year.I remember that Bacon, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and many other original-minded men, entered college about the same age; and I am strengthened in the conviction that, in order to {276} the production of fresh and independent thought, it is of ad vantage to have the drilling in the ordinary elements all over at a comparatively early age, and then allow the mind, already well stocked with general knowledge, to turn its undivided energies to its favorite and evidently predestinated field;and that the modern English plan of continuing the routine discipline in classics or mathematics till the age of twenty-two, while well fitted to produce good technical scholars, is not so well calculated to raise up great reformers in method and execution.What the Scottish colleges have to deplore is not so much the juvenility of the entrants-though this has been carried to excess -- as the total want of a provision for bringing to a point, for carrying on, for consolidating and condensing the scattered education which has been so well begun in the several classes.But to return to the college youth, we find him attending, among other classes, that of logic under Stevenson, for two sessions; that of moral philosophy under Adam Ferguson -- , that of natural philosophy under Russell:
and from all of these he received a stimulus and a bent which swayed him at the crisis of his being, and abode with him during the whole of his life.
After finishing his course in Edinburgh, he went to Glasgow in 1771, partly by the advice of Ferguson, that he might be under Dr.Thomas Reid, and partly with the view of being sent to Oxford on the Snell foundation, which has been of use to many students of Glasgow, but has in some respects been rather injurious to the college; as it has led many to ascribe to it the mere reflected glory of being a training-school to higher institutions, whereas Glasgow should assert of itself that it is prepared to give as high an education as can be had in any university in the world.The youth seems at this time to have had thoughts of entering the Church of England; and if he had gone south, he would no doubt, in that event, have discharged the duties of the episcopal office with great propriety and dignity.But a destiny better suited to his peculiar character and gifts was awaiting him.In the autumn of 1772 -- that is, when he was at the age of nineteen -- he became substitute for his father in the chair of mathematics in Edinburgh.It is precisely such an office as this, a tutorship or assistant professorship, that the Scottish colleges should provide for their {277} more promising students; an office not to be reserved for sons or personal friends of professors, but to be thrown open to public competition.This is the one thing needful to the Scottish universities, to enable them to complete the education which they commence so well, and to raise a body of learned youths, ready to compete with the tutors and fellows of Oxford and Cambridge.In 1775, Mr.
Stewart was elected assistant and successor to his father;in 1778, on Professor Adam Ferguson going to America as secretary to a commission, he, upon a week's notice, lectured for him on morals; and, in 1785, Ferguson having resigned, Stewart was appointed to the office for which he was so specially fitted, -- to the chair of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh.