S M I S M I 169 of the Royal Academy, to whose exhibition he contributed in 1786 a Narcissus and a Sabrina, which were followed by many works, usually small in size, illustrative of the English poets, especially Thomson. In 1791 Smirke was elected an associate of the Eoyal Academy, and two years later a full member. In 1814 he was nominated keeper to the Academy, but the king refused to sanction the appoint- ment on account of the artist's pronounced revolutionary opinions. He was engaged upon the Shakespeare gallery, for which he painted Katharina and Petruchio, Prince Henry and Falstaff, and other subjects. He also executed many clever and popular book -illustrations. His works, which are frequently of a humorous character, are pleasing and graceful, accomplished in draftsmanship and handled with considerable spirit. He died in London on the 5th of January 1845. SMITH, ADAM (1723-1790), the greatest of political economists, was the only child of Adam Smith, comptroller of the customs at Kirkcaldy in Fifeshire, Scotland, and of Margaret Douglas, daughter of Mr Douglas of Strathendry, near Leslie. He was born at Kirkcaldy on 5th June 1723, some months after the death of his father. Of a weak constitution, he required and received during his early years the most tender care of an affectionate mother, which he repaid in after life by every attention which filial gratitude could dictate. When he was three years old he was taken on a visit to his uncle at Strathendry, and when playing alone at the door of the house was carried off by a party of " tinkers." Fortunately he was at once missed, and the vagrants pursued and overtaken in Leslie wood. He received his early education in the school of Kirkcaldy under David Miller, amongst whose pupils were many who were afterwards distinguished men. Smith .showed as a boy great fondness for books and remarkable powers of memory ; and his friendly and generous disposi- tion made him popular amongst his schoolfellows. He was sent in 1737 to the university of Glasgow, where lie attended the lectures of Dr Hutcheson; and in 1740 he went to Baliol College, Oxford, as exhibitioner on SnelPs foundation, with a view to his taking orders in the English Church. He remained at that university for seven years. At Glasgow his favourite studies had been mathematics and natural philosophy ; but at Oxford he appears to have devoted himself almost entirely to moral and political science and to the cultivation of the ancient and modern languages. He also laboured to improve his English style by the practice of translation, particularly from the French. He was not impressed with a favourable opinion of the system of education then pursued at Oxford. After his return to Kirkcaldy he resided there two years with his mother, continuing his studies; he had relinquished the idea of entering the ecclesiastical profession, but had not yet adopted any other plan for his future life. In 1748 he removed to Edinburgh, and there, under the patronage of Lord Kames, gave lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres. About this time commenced his acquaintance with David Hume, which afterwards ripened into an intimate friend- ship, founded on mutual esteem ; his relations with that great thinker must have powerfully influenced the forma- tion of his opinions. In 1751 he was elected professor of logic at Glasgow, and in the following year was transferred to the chair of moral philosophy in the same university, which had become vacant by the death of Thomas Craigie, the successor of Hutcheson. This position he occupied for nearly twelve years, which he long afterwards declared to have been " by far the most useful, and therefore by far the happiest and most honourable period of his life." He was highly esteemed by his colleagues, of whom, on his side, he speaks as " very excellent men." His course of lectures, as Professor Millar informs us, was divided into four parts (1) natural theology ; (2) ethics ; (3) a treat- ment of that branch of morality which relates to justice, a subject which he handled historically after the manner of Montesquieu, " endeavouring to trace the gradual progress of jurisprudence, both public and private, from the rudest to the most refined ages, and to point out the effects of those arts which contribute to subsistence and to the accumulation of property in producing corresponding improvements or alterations in law and government " ; (4) a study of those political regulations which are founded, not upon the principle of justice, but that of expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity of a state. Under this view he con- sidered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military establishments. He first appeared as an author by contributing two articles to the Edinburgh Review (an earlier journal than the present, which was commenced in 1755, but of which only two numbers 1 were published), one on Johnson's Dictionary and the other a letter to the editors on the state of litera- ture in the different countries of Europe. In 1759 ap- peared his Theory of Moral Sentiments, embodying the second portion of his university course, to which was added in the 2d edition an appendix with the title, " Con- siderations concerning the first Formation of Languages." After the publication of this work his ethical doctrines occupied less space in his lectures, and a larger develop- ment was given to the subjects of jurisprudence and political economy. Stewart gives us to understand that he had already, as early as 1752, adopted the liberal views of commercial policy which he afterwards preached with so much effect ; and this we should have been inclined to believe independently from the fact that such views were propounded in that year in the Political Discourses of his friend Hume. His residence at Glasgow brought him into personal relations with many intelligent men from whose practical experience he could derive information on mer- cantile questions ; and, on the other hand, we are told, his reasonings convinced several eminent merchants of that city of the soundness of the principles of free trade, which were at variance with their previous opinions. In 1762 the senatus academicus of Glasgow conferred on him the honorary degree of doctor of laws. In 1763 he was invited to take charge of the young duke of Buc- cleuch on his travels. He accepted the proposal, and resigned his professorship. He went abroad with his pupil in March 1764; they remained only a few days at Paris and then settled at Toulouse, then the seat of a parliament, where they spent eighteen months in the best society of the place, afterwards making a tour in the south of France and passing two months at Geneva. Returning to Paris about Christmas of 1765, they remained there till the October of the following year. The period was one of intellectual and social ferment, and Smith was brought into relation with the most eminent persons of the time. He lived in the society of Quesnay, Turgot, D'Alembert, Morellet, Helvetius, Marmontel, and the duke de la Roche- foucault. It was the regard he entertained for the young nobleman 2 last named that dictated the omission in the later editions of his Moral Sentiments of the name of the celebrated ancestor of the duke, whom he had associated with Mandeville as author of one of the " licentious sys- 1 These two numbers were reprinted in 1818. Smith's letter to the editors is specially interesting for its account of the Encyclopedic and its criticism of Rousseau's pictures of savage life. 2 The duke undertook a translation of the Theory of Moral Senti- ments, but the Abbe Blavet's version appeared (1774) before his was completed and he then relinquished the design. An earlier French translation had been published (1764) under the title Metaphysiqite de Vfime ; and there is a later one the best by the marquis de Con- dorcet (1798, 2d ed. 1830). XXII. 22
