much is lost in this respect by this partial mode of exhibiting him.

"The else unvalued circumstances in the lives of literary men" (says Mr. Mackenzie in his "Memoir of the Life of John Home") acquire an interest with the reader, proportionate to that which the writings of the author have excited; and we are anxious to know every little occurrence which befel him, who was giving, at the period when these occurrences took place, the product of his mind to the public. We are anxious to know how the world treated a man who was labouring for its instruction or amusement, as well as the effect which his private circumstances had on his literary productions, or the complexion, as one may term it, which those productions borrowed from the incidents of his life. These considerations afford an apology for the narratives of the comparatively unimportant occupations which the world peruses with so much interest -they help that personification of an author which the reader of his work so naturally indulges; and if they sometimes put him right in his estimate of the influence of genius or feeling upon conduct, they serve at the same time as a moral lesson on the subject, and a mark as it were of the unexpected shores or islands, sometimes it may be rocks or quicksands, on the chart of life."

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SECTION 2.-From the birth of Dr. Smith till the publication of the Theory of Moral Sentiments." ADAM SMITH was born at Kirkaldy, in Fifeshire, on the 5th of June, 1723. His father was comptroller of the customs at that place, and had in early life practised as a writer to the signet in Edinburgh. He had been for some years private secretary to the Earl of Loudon, when he received his appointment to the customs at Kirkaldy. His wife was the daughter of Mr. Douglas, of Strathenry; and Adam was the only issue of their marriage. His mother lived long enough to enjoy the celebrity of her son; but he had the misfortune never to have known the care and affection of his father, whose death took place a few months previous to the birth of his distinguished offspring. His constitution during infancy, we are informed, was weak and sickly, and required the tenderest solicitude of his surviving parent for the preservation of his life. It is remarkable that in this respect a nearly similar for

tune should have attended two of the most remarkable men whom Scotland has produced. It was the fate of Hume to lose his father in his infancy, and to owe, like Smith, to a widowed mother, all the protection and care so requisite at that early period. The mother of our young philosopher was, by some persons, accused of over-indulging her son, but the indulgence of the parent was best vindicated by the growing temper and disposition of the child; and Mrs. Smith during her long life (which extended till within twelve years of the death of her son) had never occasion to reproach her. self for any indiscreet kindness, but had the happiness to see her parental care acknowledged to the hour of her death, by every attention which filial affection could prompt.

An accident befel him when he was about three years of age, which, if it had not proved fatal to his life, might have strangely altered his future destiny, and might thus, perhaps, have influenced, in no small degree, the progress of political science in Europe. He had been on a visit to his uncle, Mr. Douglas of Strathenry; and as he was one day amusing himself at the door of the house, he was carried off by, a party of gipsies. Happily he was very soon missed by his uncle, who having learned that a set of vagrants had recently passed that way, pursued and overtook them in Leslie Wood-with feelings with which it is easy to sympathize, even without reference to the importance of the life he had preserved.

When the period arrived at which it was deemed proper that he should be sent to school, he was placed under the care of Mr. David Miller, who then taught the school at Kirkaldy,—a person who enjoyed no inconsiderable reputation as a teacher in his day, and who had the fortune to educate, about the same period, a few men of greater eminence in after life than are frequently to be found registered in so obscure a seminary. With some of these Smith contracted an intimacy which lasted during their lives. We are not exactly informed of the time when he was placed under Mr. Miller's care, but we know that he remained with him till he attained his fourteenth year. His great love of books, even in those early years, attracted the notice of his schoolfellows, as did the extraordinary powers of his memory, and those habits of mental abstraction for which he was remarkable

throughout life. His love of reading was indulged and strengthened the more, owing to the weakness of his constitution, which prevented his joining in the more active pastimes of his companions. Their fondness for him was not lessened by habits which schoolboys in general might be apt to regard as unsocial, but it arose from the excellence of his temper, and the warm and generous feelings which distinguished him.

It is to be regretted that we know so little of the nature of his reading at this period of his life. That he was well grounded in the dead languages, and that the classic writers of Greece and Rome were favourite objects of his study whilst he was under the care of Mr. Miller, may safely be presumed. His works afford abundant evidence of the extent of his acquirements in this department of literature, a relish for which never deserted him in after life, even amidst the profound inquiries which occupied his attention while engaged in the composition of his greatest work. Had Dr. Smith, however, like Gibbon, become his own biographer, or like Johnson, had he had the fortune to leave behind him such a chronicler as Boswell, we might then have seen, perhaps in the earliest unprescribed studies of the recluse student at Kirkaldy, the first indications of that tendency of mind and mode of thinking which gave promise of the future author of the "Wealth of Nations."

In 1737, at the age of fourteen, he left Kirkaldy, and was removed to the University of Glasgow, where he had the happiness of studying under Dr. Francis Hutcheson, of whom he always spoke, as he has written, in terms of the highest admiration. The lectures of that distinguished professor may be fairly considered as having first directed his views to that branch of ethical philosophy so beautifully illustrated in the "Theory of Moral Sentiments," which he afterwards gave to the world, and in which he has equal merit in having confirmed what was right, and corrected what was wrong in the speculations of his eloquent tutor. It is said, however, that Mathematics and Natural Philosophy engaged the greater portion of his attention during his residence at Glasgow; but his "History of Astronomy" in the Posthumous Essays is the only one of his writings in which we discover much of the fruits of his acquaintance with those sciences, His illustrations are al

most always drawn from history, poetry, and polite literature; and, though he prized the persons and the characters of mathematicians and natural philosophers, and has judged highly (perhaps partially) of the tendency of such studies upon the temper and morals of the individual, it is quite clear that they were neither so congenial to his taste, nor did he estimate their importance to the interests of mankind as being in any respect equal to that of other branches of philosophy, and those more especially which he afterwards himself so largely illustrated and advanced. To these latter, therefore, to the history of mankind, to the moral, economical, and political phases which are presented in its progress, we may be assured, without any particular testimony, that his attention was very early directed, and for a long period of years in a great measure confined. But we have one fact that goes strikingly in proof of this, which is interesting on many accounts, and not the least so as pointing out the first and only book which we know to have been read by him about this period, and which must have been read from love alone, since it was read by stealth.

In 1740, after three years spent at Glasgow, he was removed to the university of Oxford, and entered at Baliol College as an exhibitioner on Snell's foundation. It would appear that shortly after his arrival there, from some cause or other he had given occasion to suspect that his private, hours were not always devoted to such books as the discipline of Oxford prescribes to its students; and it was determined therefore by the heads of the college, with more of zeal than honour, that the young philosopher from the north should be taken by surprise in his chamber, in order to ascertain whether the nature of his studies was really orthodox or not. Unluckily, he was found reading the "Treatise of Human Nature," then recently published, and the discovery was of course followed by a severe reprimand and the forfeiture of the forbidden volume. Smith, at that time, knew perhaps nothing more of the book he was perusing than that it was the production of a young Scotchman—a work, which as the author of it said himself, "fell dead-born from the press," little known and a good deal decried, but recommended to Smith by the subject

• Vide Theory of Moral Sent., Part III., Ch. 2,

of which it treats, by his love of metaphysics, and the profound and original speculations which it contained; as inviting to the young and free inquirer as they were alarming to the heads of the university. It was not till some years after this that the immortal author of the work in question became known to his young disciple, and that that enduring friendship was cemented betwixt them, which both of them have taken pains to record-" a friendship on both sides founded on the admiration of genius and the love of simplicity," as Mr. Stewart has beautifully expressed it, and which, without biassing the judgment of Smith, must have exalted the pride and the pleasure which he felt, when years after this, he cited him in the " Wealth of Nations" in language which many have thought savoured rather of the warmth of friendship than the calmness of sober judgment, as by far the most illustrious philosopher and historian of the present age*.

When Smith was sent to Oxford, it had been the intention of his family that he should study for the Church of England. He remained seven years at that renowned seat of learning; but long before he left it, not finding the ecclesiastical profession suited to his taste, he had abandoned all such intention, and preferred the hopes of such small emolument as his literary attainments might procure for him in his own country, to the higher prospects which the prudence of his friends had pointed out. As there is every reason to admire the independence of mind which induced him to abandon those prospects, we can have none to regret it on any other ground, from the direction which was thus given to the studies and the labours of his future life. There is no doubt that had Dr. Smith voluntarily made the Church his profession, he would have adorned it by genius and learning, that the purity of his life would have added force to the precepts which it would have been his duty to inculcate as a Christian teacher. But this advantage would have been too dearly purchased. The Church would more easily find a substitute for Smith as one of its ministers, than the world might have found one like him, capable of unfolding for its instruction those laws equally divine in their origin and beneficent in their results when rightly apprehended, which regulate

Book v. Ch. 1.

the order and advance the moral and political condition of society. The mind of Smith, which found in such subjects a boundless field for his contemplations, might have been confined, and at length contracted, by the professional study of theological learning. The great truths of religion are as simple as they are sublime; and their simplicity renders useless much that human ingenuity can do, while their sublimity defies it. To know God, says Seneca, is to worship him. And much of this knowledge is attained by looking attentively upon the glories of his creation.

It is to be lamented that we know so little of the life of Smith during that part of it which was passed at Oxford. What he thought of that university, of its discipline and its studies, he told the world many years after in a memorable passage of the "Wealth of Nations"," which has never been forgiven by the worshippers of Oxford, and by all those who are prone to consider it a crime to point out the defects of any ancient institution. Strange it may seem that there should always be a number of persons prone to such a course, seeing that the corruptions and abuses which are incident to establishments of this kind, like the diseases in the animal body, have a natural tendency to bring on decay, and that the best friend to such institutions, like the best physician, is he who first discovers the disorder-a discovery necessarily antecedent to the suggestion of the remedy. Yet there are few mistakes so common as this in the world, and few more fatal to its improvement. It is the error of preferring the means to the end, the mere instrument, an instrument often worn out, and sometimes become useless, to the excellent purposes it was designed to work. It may be proper to enlarge a little upon this topic, on account of the unjust prejudice that has been excited against Dr. Smith, in consequence of his animadversions upon Oxford, and is constantly excited for the worst purposes against men like him, whose enlightened and benevolent efforts for the improvement of public institutions, instead of gratitude, have often experienced calumny and opposition. If Smith censured the discipline, or rather the want of discipline, and the abandonment of duty in the tutors and professors of Oxford in his day, what possible motive

Book v. Ch. 1. Part 3.

could he have that is reconcileable with the acknowledged qualities of the man, but a zeal, a warm and indignant zeal, it may be, in behalf of that learning and science which was going to ruin, by the neglect of those who were appointed for their conservation? Of course it is unnecessary to say that we refer not to Oxford as it now is; but if it has been reformed since the days of Smith, it has been reformed only, because some have been found bold and wise enough, like him and after him, to proclaim that it stood in need of such reformation. Far be it from us, and from every friend of learning, to abate that just veneration for the institutions of our country; those especially which have the promotion of science and of virtue for their object, which is really their due-due often to their antiquity to the excellence of their founders-and to the long catalogue of illustrious men who have been bred under them, and whose wisdom and learning, whose virtue and heroism in after life, seem, by a very natural and pleasing illusion, to become identified with the places in which they were educated.

Of the seven years which Smith passed at Oxford little, indeed, has been recorded. We have scarcely an incident relating to his private life, and as little do we know respecting his intellectual habits. Mr. Stewart presumes that he cultivated with particular care, at this time, the study of languages;-a study for which it would seem he had an unusual fondness, and in which, at all events, he is known to have excelled. But Smith studied languages more as a philosopher than a scholar, as they serve to throw light on the manners, the institutions, the modes of thought peculiar to different nations and ages. His knowledge of Greek was profound and accurate; and his taste and high admiration for the drama and literature of the Greeks, preserved to the latest period of his life, may be best traced to the studies and the society in which he mixed whilst at the university. Mr. Dalzell, the distinguished professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh, has borne testimony to the extent and accuracy of Dr. Smith's acquaintance with that noble language, as often displayed in conversation with him on some of the nicest minutiæ of grammatical criticism. He was accustomed at this time to exercise himself in translation

from various languages, chiefly French; and always spoke of it as useful for the acquisition of the art of composition, and for improvement in style. Gibbon has recommended the same practice in his own Memoirs, and a mode of study, we may venture to say, which was pursued and praised by two such distinguished writers, is well worth the attention of all who cultivate literature.

Upon quitting Oxford, Smith returned to Kirkaldy, where he continued to reside with his mother for two years, with the most ardent application to study. In 1748 he removed to Edinburgh, and there commenced his connexion and friendship with many of the distinguished men who then adorned that city; and composed a society which included within its range an extent and variety of accomplishments, and a depth and solidity of philosophy and of learning, not easily equalled in any other, at any period of modern Europe. Among its members we find a vast portion of the names familiar to us, from having enriched the literature of our country in various departments, about the middle of the last century. Those of Hume and Robertson, of Blair, of Ferguson, of Lord Kames and John Home, are known to every reader; but there were others not less accomplished though less known to posterity, whose genius and talents added lustre, even to so brilliant an assemblage of men; Lord Elibank, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Lord Loughborough, Sir William Pulteney, Lord Monboddo, Dr. Logan; these, and many others, we find enumerated in the "Select Society," which was formed in Edinburgh about that period; the list of which Mr. Stewart has preserved*. At this time commenced his memorable friendship with David Hume, the philosopher who had led the way into those very regions of moral and political inquiry, where Smith was destined to follow, guided chiefly, as he always confessed, and as was admitted by his admirers, by that light which had been shed upon them by the most subtle intellect, perhaps, which ancient or modern Europe has produced T.

It was not long after his settlement in Edinburgh, that the friendly patronage of Lord Kames induced Smith to com

Appendix to the Life of Robertson.

+ It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that, in the panegyrics pronounced upon Hume, we refer merely to his celebrated writings upon moral and political science, and not to those upon religion.

mence a course of Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, which he continued for a considerable time; until the high reputation which he had earned, seconded by the zeal of his friends, procured for him, in 1751, the professorship of Logic in the university of Glasgow. In 1752, upon the death of Mr. Thomas Craigie, he was advanced to the chair of Moral Philosophy in the same University; an office which he continued to fill for thirteen years ;-a period which he was accustomed to look back upon, as the most useful and happy of his life. "It was indeed a situation," says his biographer, "in which he was eminently fitted to excel, and in which the daily labours of his profession were constantly recalling his attention to his favourite pursuits, and familiarising his mind to those important speculations he was afterwards to communicate to the world."

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It is greatly to be regretted, that no part of his lectures whilst at Glasgow, has been preserved; but the following brief and very interesting account of them was furnished by one of Dr. Smith's pupils, who afterward became one of his warmest and latest friends. There is no necessity to apologise for presenting it to our readers, seeing that we cannot better supply the vacuum that would otherwise be left, owing to the very scanty materials which remain for a life of this distinguished man. In the professorship of logic," says one of his students, "to which Dr. Smith was appointed on his first introduction to this university, he soon saw the necessity of departing widely from the plan that had been followed by his predecessors; and of directing the attention of his pupils to studies of a more interesting and useful nature than the logic and metaphysics of the schools. Accordingly after exhibiting a general view of the powers of the mind, and explaining so much of the ancient logic as was requisite to gratify curiosity, with respect to an artificial method of reasoning, which had once occupied the universal attention of the learned, he dedicated the rest of his time to the delivery of a system of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. The best method of explaining and illustrating the various powers of the human mind, the most useful part of metaphysics, arises from an examination of the several ways of communicating our thoughts by speech, and from an attention to the principles of those literary composi

on

tions, which contribute to persuasion or entertainment. The first part of these lectures, in point of composition, was highly finished; and the whole discovered strong marks of taste and original genius. His course of lectures moral philosophy was divided into four parts. The first contained natural theology, in which he considered the proofs of the being and attributes of God, and those principles of the human mind on which religion is founded. The second comprehended ethics strictly so called; in the third part, he treated at more length of that branch of morality which relates to justice. Upon this subject he endeavoured 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 in law and government. In the last part of his lectures, he examined those political regulations, founded not upon the principle of justice, but of expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity of a state: under this view he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances to ecclesiastical and military establishments. In delivering his lectures, he trusted almost entirely to extemporary elocution. His manner was plain and unaffected, and as he seemed to be always interested in his subject, he never failed to interest his hearers. Each discourse consisted of several distinct propositions, which he endeavoured to prove and illustrate. In his attempts to explain them, he often appeared at first not to be sufficiently possessed of the subject, and spoke with some hesitation: as he advanced, the matter seemed to crowd upon him, his manner became warm and animated, and his expression easy and fluent. In points of controversy, it was discernible that he conceived an opposition to be made to his opinions, and that he was led to support them with greater energy and ve hemence. By the fulness and variety of his illustrations the subject swelled in his hands, and acquired a dimension, which, without a repetition of the same views, was calculated to seize the attention of his audience, and to afford them pleasure and instruction in following the same object through all the diversity