[156] Begun for the _Encyclopædia Metropolitana_ in 1818; and published in 1835-37. Dugald Stewart's chief criticism is in his Essays (_Works_, v. 149-188). John Fearn published his _Anti-Tooke_ in 1820.
If English philosophy was a blank, there was still a leader of high reputation in Scotland. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) had a considerable influence upon the Utilitarians. He represented, on the one hand, the doctrines which they thought themselves specially bound to attack, and it may perhaps be held that in some ways he betrayed to them the key of the position. Stewart[157] was son of a professor of mathematics at Edinburgh. He studied at Glasgow (1771-72) where he became Reid's favourite pupil and devoted friend. In 1772 he became the assistant, and in 1775 the colleague, of his father, and he appears to have had a considerable knowledge of mathematics. In 1785 he succeeded Adam Ferguson as professor of moral philosophy and lectured continuously until 1810. He then gave up his active duties to Thomas Brown, devoting himself to the completion and publication of the substance of his lectures. Upon Brown's death in 1820, he resigned a post to which he was no longer equal. A paralytic stroke in 1822 weakened him, though he was still able to write. He died in 1828.
If Stewart now makes no great mark in histories of philosophy, his personal influence was conspicuous. Cockburn describes him as of delicate appearance, with a massive head, bushy eyebrows, gray intelligent eyes, flexible mouth and expressive countenance. His voice was sweet and his ear exquisite. Cockburn never heard a better reader, and his manners, though rather formal, were graceful and dignified. James Mill, after hearing Pitt and Fox, declared that Stewart was their superior in eloquence. At Edinburgh, then at the height of its intellectual activity, he held his own among the ablest men and attracted the loyalty of the younger. Students came not only from Scotland but from England, the United States, France and Germany.[158] Scott won the professor's approval by an essay on the 'Customs of the Northern Nations.' Jeffrey, Horner, Cockburn and Mackintosh were among his disciples. His lectures upon Political Economy were attended by Sydney Smith, Jeffrey and Brougham, and one of his last hearers was Lord Palmerston. Parr looked up to him as a great philosopher, and contributed to his works an essay upon the etymology of the word 'sublime,' too vast to be printed whole. Stewart was an upholder of Whig principles, when the Scottish government was in the hands of the staunchest Tories. The irreverent young Edinburgh Reviewers treated him with respect, and to some extent applied his theory to politics. Stewart was the philosophical heir of Reid; and, one may say, was a Whig both in philosophy and in politics. He was a rationalist, but within the limits fixed by respectability; and he dreaded the revolution in politics, and believed in the surpassing merits of the British Constitution as interpreted by the respectable Whigs.