Stewart. He attended also the chemistry lectures of Joseph Black, M.D. [q. v.] He was a member of the ‘dialectic society’ founded by ‘burgher’ divinity students at the Edinburgh University. After graduation he acted as tutor, first to Thomas Francis Kennedy [q. v.] at Dunure, Ayrshire, next in a family in Northumberland, where he had the opportunity of speaking French. He then removed to Eton, as a private tutor. His connection with the conductors of the ‘Edinburgh Review’ was known to Byron, who in his ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ inserted the taunt (line 360 of the original anonymous edition, March 1809):
And paltry Pillans shall traduce his friend.
The line was never withdrawn, though Moore, in a note to his edition of 1832, states that ‘there was not, it is believed, the slightest foundation for the charge in the text.’
On the death of Adam (13 Dec. 1809), Pillans offered himself, with some misgiving, for he did not feel attracted to ‘the profession of a public teacher,’ as a candidate for the rectorship of the Edinburgh High School, his chief opponent being Luke Fraser, one of the masters. Adam had recommended Pillans as his successor; his whig politics stood against him with the tory town council, with whom the appointment lay; but the influence of Robert Blair [q. v.] of Avontoun, the lord president of the court of session, secured his election. In January 1810 Pillans entered on his duties in the old high school, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, with a class of 144 boys. At the outset he found it necessary to assert his authority in presence of insubordination, and for the first year he made effective use of the tawse. But he held that to rely on such aid was a sign of the teacher's incompetence, and, being a strict disciplinarian, he was soon able to dispense with it altogether. He introduced a monitorial system, then unknown in the classical schools of Scotland, and so efficient was his method, both for order and teaching, that, though his class doubled its numbers, he declined the town council's offer to provide him with an assistant. His reputation attracted pupils from all parts of the world. He developed the teaching of Greek, which had been begun by Christison in Adam's time; and encouraged the study of classical geography, always a favourite subject with him. His experience at Eton led him to cultivate Latin verse composition, which in Scotland was a lost art. A small volume of the compositions of his class, ‘Ex Tentaminibus Metricis … in Schola Regia Edinensi … electa,’ Edinburgh, 1812, 8vo (dedicated to Joseph Goodall [q. v.], provost of Eton), was favourably noticed in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (November 1812) and severely criticised by Southey in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (December 1812). Pillans admitted that the publication was premature, took the criticism in good part, and turned out better verse in after years. His favourite pupil was John Brown Patterson [q. v.]
In 1820 the chair of ‘humanity and laws’ (practically Latin) in the Edinburgh university was vacated by the death of Alexander Christison, father of Sir Robert Christison, M.D. [q. v.] Pillans was elected his successor, the patronage being then vested in the lords of session, the town council, the faculty of advocates, and the society of writers to the signet. He held the chair till within a year of his death, thus occupying for over fifty-three years a prominent position, first in the scholastic, then in the academic life of Edinburgh. Robert Chambers humorously divided mankind into two sections, those who had been pupils of Pillans, and those who had not. In the conduct of his chair he adopted some of the plans of which he had proved the efficiency at the high school; but he dignified his monitors with the name of ‘inspectors.’ He was not freed from the task of teaching elementary Latin, for the frequenters of his junior class at the university were, as a rule, below the standard of the rector's class at the high school. He was of opinion that universities should supply elementary teaching in classics, and hence opposed, with Philip Kelland [q. v.] and others, the institution (May 1855) of an entrance examination to the junior Greek class, though he was in favour of an examination for admission to higher classes. Precision and refinement of scholarship, rather than wealth of erudition, characterised his prelections; he excelled in exact and luminous translation, and especially cultivated this power in his pupils; of comment he was sparing, but his illustrative matter was always terse, compact, and full of point. His success lay in his power of imbuing successive generations of students with a living interest in Latin literature, and an appreciative taste for its beauties. He enlarged the conventional range of authors proposed for study. Admiration for the Roman literary genius inspired his lectures and his prefaces; he preferred Cicero as an orator to Demosthenes and, as an exponent of Plato, to Plato himself; ranked
