| Description | On the spine has been written ‘ESSAYS MS. 1795. 1790’. On the front cover has been written in pencil: ‘Gregory Watt’s book of Exercises etc.’ The essays appear to have been on loose pages which were bound together at a later date. There is no list of contents. Each essay has its own numbered pages, the pages in the volume are therefore, not consecutively numbered throughout.The subjects of the essays are mostly philosophical: essays giving explanation of various terms such as Reason, Perception, Judgement; ‘On Abstraction’; ‘On the Seven Rules’; an essay on the motives to study arising from considerations of filial affection and gratitude; ‘An memoria augeri potest & quomodo’; an essay on the siege of Troy; ‘The purpose of artificial language is to facilitate the communication of thoughts’; two long essays, one on Catiline and one on how man is distinguished from the animals by speech and reason. There are also two poems, one on a dying slave and one titled ‘Description of the Profession upon the Black Stone’, which was a ceremony held at Glasgow College. At the end of some of the essays are comments written by a teacher, who at the end of the exercise titled ‘Theme on the Character of a Diligent Student’, has signed himself ‘Mr Patrick’. |