Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JOSEPH BLACK: HIS LIFE AND WORK There are some natures so happily constituted that they escape many of the trials which beset most men. Marcus Aurelius thanked his adopted father for having taught him the advantages of ' a smooth and inoffensive temper; constancy to friends, without tiring or fondness; being always satisfied and cheerful; reaching forward into the future, and managing accordingly; not neglecting the least concerns, but all without hurry, or being embarrassed.' Such a character had Joseph Black. Dr. Robison, the editor of his lectures, his successor in Glasgow University, and his biographer, wrote: ' As he advanced in years his countenance continued to preserve that pleasing expression of inward satisfaction, which, by giving ease to the beholder, never fails to please. His manner was perfectly easy and unaffected and graceful. He was of most easy approach, affable, and readily entered into conversation, whether serious or trivial. His mind being abundantly furnished with matter, his conversation was at all times pertinent and agreeable. He was a stranger to none of the elegant accomplishments of life.' His friend Dr. Ferguson said of him: ' As Dr. Black had never anything for ostentation, he was at all times precisely what the occasion required, and no more. Never did any one see Dr. Black hurried at one time to recover matter which had been improperly neglected on a former occasion. Everything being done in its proper season and place, he ever seemed to have leisure in store; and he was ready to receive his friend or acquaintance, and to take his part with cheerfulness in any conversation that occurred.' His successor, Dr. Thomas Thomson, found Dr. Robison's estimate of Black's character so just that he appropriated it almost verbatim in his History of Chemist...