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LIFE OF DR. ADAM SMITH:

By
William Draper

PUBLISHED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE
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LIFE OF DR. ADAM SMITH.

Introduction.

Ir is well known that the late lamented Dugald Stewart, amidst the profound and comprehensive studies to which his life was dedicated, became the biographer of three of his countrymen-two of them being amongst the most distinguished of whom Scotland has to boast: these were, Dr. Robertson the historian, and Adam Smith. His friend and tutor, Dr. Reid, we place, where we conceive the world has placed him, in a rank far below these, and where we cannot but think Mr. Stewart would himself have placed him, if his affectionate remembrance of his early instructor had left his judgment perfectly impartial with respect to Dr. Reid's merits as a philosopher.

Since the days of the Memorabilia, when Xenophon became the biographer of Socrates, there has been seen perhaps no proportion so equal betwixt the writer and his subject, as when Dugald Stewart wrote the "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith." Yet, congenial as was the theme, and beautifully as he has illustrated the writings, there is a deficiency in the life. It was observed of Mallet, that he wrote the life of Lord Bacon, and forgot that he was a philosopher. This, at least, cannot be said of Mr. Stewart. He has kept the philosopher so much in mind, that he has almost forgotten the man. In his review of the works of the distinguished person, in his criticism and his comments, we find everything that we can desire and might expect, even from the pen of Mr. Stewart; but we look in vain for those traits of personal character, those slight yet important incidents and anecdotes which marked the individual, which, when preserved and depicted, form the great charm of biography, and which serve, far more than the most laboured disquisition or panegyric, to recommend to us, and quicken our interest in, the circumstances by which the subject of the memorial acquired his celebrity. Mr. Stewart seems to have entertained a difference of opinion upon this point; possibly he deemed it beneath the dignity of the life of a philosopher.

Yet the earliest and most amusing, if not most accurate of biographers thought otherwise. "It is not always," says Plutarch, "in the most distinguished exploits that men's virtues or vices may be best discerned; but frequently an action of small note, a short saying or a jest distinguishes a person's real character more than the greatest battles or the most important actions. As painters labour the likeness in the face, so must we be permitted to strike off the features of the soul, in order to give a real likeness to these great men*." Upon this principle has this inimitable writer left us à record of the lives of upwards of fifty warriors, legislators, and statesmen, investing them with an interest and a wisdom which will delight and instruct the last generations of mankind.

There may have been biographers who have carried their passion for detail and minute anecdote somewhat too far, but even in such cases we feel it is rather ungrateful to condemn them; and we might take the very extreme of this class, even Boswell himself, with all his faults, and almost challenge the world to produce another book of biography of equal interest with the Life of Johnson.

But betwixt Plutarch and Boswell there is an interval, almost as wide as between Auchinleck and Chæronea; and Mr. Stewart ought not, perhaps, strictly to have conformed himself to the example of either. Yet we cannot but regret that much that would interest us has been lost for ever; those many peculiarities, those lights and shadows which would have made us familiar with the man, and given a graphic reality to the portrait. Mr. Stewart was the sonal friend of Adam Smith during many of his latter years; and for all that related to him previously, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have collected information and anecdote in the society of Edinburgh. If it be one object, as it must be presumed of the biographer, to extend the fame of the person whose life he undertakes to record, surely it must be obvious how

Plutarch-Life of Alexander. B

per

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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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 herself 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. B 2

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