unger men who shared the simple pleasures of
this homely Anderston board--Adam Smith, Joseph Black, and James
Watt--were to exert as important effects on the progress of mankind as
any men of their generation. Watt specially mentions Smith as one of
the principal figures of the club, and says their conversation,
"besides the usual subjects with young men, turned principally on
literary topics, religion, morality, belles-lettres, etc., and to this
conversation my mind owed its first bias towards such subjects in
which they were all my superiors, I never having attended a college,
and being then but a mechanic."[74] According to this account religion
was not proscribed, but Professor Traill's assertion is so explicit
that probably Watt's recollection errs. It is, however, another sign
of the liberal spirit that then animated these Glasgow professors to
find them welcoming on a footing of perfect equality one who, as he
says, was then only a mechanic, but whose mental worth they had the
sense to recognise. Dr. Carlyle, who was invited by Simson to join the
club in 1743, says the two chief spirits in it then were Hercules
Lindsay, the Professor of Law, and James Moor, the Professor of Greek,
both of whom were still members in Smith's time. Lindsay, who, it will
be remembered, acted as Smith's substitute in the logic class, was a
man of force and independence, who had suffered much abuse from the
Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh for giving up the old practice of
delivering his lectures in Latin, and refusing to return to it. Moor
was the general editor of the famous editions of the classics printed
by his brother-in-law, Robert Foulis, a man, says Dugald Stewart, of
"a gaiety and levity foreign to this climate," much addicted to
punning, and noted for his gift of ready repartee. He was always
smartly dressed and powdered, and one day as he was passing on the
Plainstanes he overheard two young military officers observe one to
the other, "He smells strongly of powder." "Don't be alarmed, my young
soldier," said Moor, turning round on the speaker, "it is not
gunpowder." A great promoter of the merriment of the club was Dr.
Thomas Hamilton, Professor of Anatomy, the grandfather of Sir William,
the metaphysician, who is thus described in some verses by Dr. John
Moore, the author of _Zelucco_--

He who leads up the van is stout Thomas the tall,
Who can make us all laugh, though he laughs at us all;
But _entre nous_,