170 SMITH [ADAM- tems" reviewed in the seventh part of that work. Smith was without doubt much influenced by his contact with the members of the physiocratic school, especially with its chief, though Dupont de Nemours probably goes too far in speaking of Smith and himself as having been "con- disciples chez M. Quesnay." Smith afterwards described Quesnay as a man "of the greatest modesty and sim- plicity," and declared his system of political economy to be, " with all its imperfections, the nearest approximation to truth that had yet been published on the principles of that science." In October 1766 tutor and pupil returned home, and they ever afterwards retained strong feelings of mutual esteem. For the next ten years Smith lived with his mother at Kirkcaldy, only paying occasional visits to Edinburgh and London ; he was engaged in close study during most of this time, but unbent his mind in familiar intercourse with a few friends. He describes himself to Hume during this period as being extremely happy, com- fortable, and contented. He was now occupied on his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which there is some reason for believing he had begun at Toulouse. That great work appeared in 1776. 1 After its publication, and only a few months before his own death, Hume wrote to congratulate his friend " Euge ! belle ! dear Mr Smith, I am much pleased with your performance, and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much ex- pectation by yourself, by your friends, and by the public, that I trembled for its appearance ; but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular. But it has depth, and solidity, and acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious facts that it must at last take the public attention." Smith attended Hume affectionately during a part of his last illness, and soon after the death of the philosopher there was published, along with his autobiography, a letter from Smith to Strahan, in which he gave an account of the closing scenes of his friend's life and expressed warm admiration for his character. This letter excited some rancour among the theologians, and Dr George Home, afterwards bishop of Norwich, published in 1777, by way of comment on it, A Letter to Adam Smith on the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his Friend David Hume, by one of the people called Christians. But Smith took no notice of this effusion. 2 He was also attacked by Archbishop Magee for the omission in subsequent editions of a passage of the Moral Sentiments which that prelate had cited with high com- mendation as among the ablest illustrations of the doctrine of the atonement. Smith had omitted the paragraph in question on the ground that it was unnecessary and mis- 1 Mr J. E. T. Rogers published in the Academy, 28th February 1885, a letter of Smith to William Pulteney, written in 1772, from which he thinks it probable that the work lay "unrevised and un- altered "in the author's desk for four years. A similar conclusion seems to follow from a letter of Hume in Burton's Life, ii. p. 461. 2 A story was told by Sir Walter Scott, and is also related in the Edinburgh Review, of an " unfortunate rencontre," arising out of the publication of the same letter, between Smith and Dr Johnson, during the visit of the latter to Glasgow. The same story is given in a note in Wilberforce's Correspondence, the scene being somewhat vaguely laid in " Scotland. " But it is impossible that it should be true ; for Johnson made his tour in 1773, whilst Hume's death did not take place till 1776. Smith seems not to have met Johnson in Scotland at all. It appears, however, from Boswell's Life, under date of 29th April 1778, that Johnson had on one occasion quarrelled with Smith and treated him rudely at Strahan's house, apparently in London ; but, as Robertson met Johnson " for the first time " immediately after that incident, and as we know that Robertson met him in Scotland, it follows that the " unlucky altercation " at Strahan's must have occurred before the Scotch tour, and could have had nothing to do with the letter on Hume's death. placed ; but Magee suspected him of having been influ- enced by deeper reasons. The greater part of the two years which followed the publication of the Wealth of Nations Smith spent in Lon- don, enjoying the society of the most eminent persons of the day, amongst whom were Gibbon, Burke, Reynolds, and Beauclerk. In 1778 he was appointed, through the in- fluence of the duke of Buccleuch, one of the commissioners of customs in Scotland, and in consequence of this fixed his residence at Edinburgh. His mother, now in extreme old age, lived with him, as did also his cousin, Miss Jane Douglas, who assisted him in the care of his aged parent, and superintended his household. Much of his now ample income is believed to have been spent in secret charities, and he kept a simple, though hospitable, table, at which, "without the formality of an invitation, he was always happy to receive his friends." "His Sunday suppers," says M'Culloch, "were long celebrated at Edinburgh." One of his favourite places of resort in these years was a club of which Dr Hutton, Dr Black, Dr Adam Ferguson, John Clerk the naval tactician, Robert Adam the archi- tect, as well as Smith himself, were original members, and to which Dugald Stewart, Professor Playfair, and other eminent men were afterwards admitted. Another source of enjoyment was the small but excellent library he possessed; it is still preserved in his family ; Professor Nicholson has had access to it, and was struck by the varied nature of the collection, and especially by the large number of books of travel and poetry which it contained. In 1787 he was elected lord rector of the university of Glasgow, an honour which he received with "heartfelt joy." If we can believe a note in Wilberforce's Correspondence, he visited London in the spring of the same year, and was introduced by Dundas 3 to Pitt, Wilberforce, and others. From the death of his mother in 1784, and that of Miss Douglas in 1788, his health and strength gradually declined, and after a tedious and painful illness he died on 17th July 1790. Before his decease Smith directed that all his manuscripts except a few selected essays should be destroyed, and they were accordingly committed to the flames. Of the pieces preserved by his desire the most valuable is his tract on the history of astronomy, which he himself described as a "fragment of a great work " ; it was doubt- less a portion of the "connected history of the liberal sciences and elegant arts" which, we are told, he had projected in early life. Among the papers destroyed were probably, as Stewart suggests, the lectures on natural religion and jurisprudence which formed part of his course at Glasgow, and also the lectures on rhetoric which he delivered at Edinburgh in 1748. To the latter Blair seems to refer when, in his work on Rhetoric and Belles- Lcttres (1783), lie acknowledges his obligations to a manuscript treatise on rhetoric by Smith, part of which its author had shown to him many years before, and which he hoped Smith would give to the public. It was probably the lectures on jurisprudence which Smith had in view when, some time before his death expressing regret that he "had done so little," he added, "I meant to have done more, and there are materials in my papers of which I could have made a great deal." He had promised at the end of his Theory of Moral Sentiments a treatise on the general principles of jurispru- dence from the historical point of view, which would doubtless have been a development of his university lectures on that subject. In person Smith was of about the middle size, well made and stout, though not corpulent. His features are said to be well represented in the medallion by Tassie engraved in M'Culloch's edition of the Wealth of Nations. His discourses as professor were almost entirely extemporary, and, as he was always interested in his subject, he never failed to interest his hearers. He was some- times, Millar tells us, embarrassed and spoke with hesitation at the outset; but " as he advanced the matter seemed to crowd upon him, his manner became warm and animated, and his expression easy and fluent." In society, except amongst intimate friends, he spoke but seldom, and was rather disposed to enjoy in silence the gaiety of those around him. He often seemed altogether occupied with his own thoughts, or might even have been supposed, from his looks and gestures, to be " in the fervour of composition." " He was the most absent man in company," says Alexander Carlyle, " that I 3 An interesting letter of Smith to Dundas (1st November 1779) on free trade for Ireland is printed in the Eng. Hist. Review, No. 2.
