Life of Adam Smith Part 18

DEAR SMITH--I should agree to your Reasoning if I could trust your Resolution. Come hither for some weeks about Christmas; dissipate yourself a little; return to Kirkaldy; finish your work before autumn; go to London, print it, return and settle in this town, which suits your studious, independent turn even better than London. Execute this plan faithfully, and I forgive you....

Ferguson has returned fat and fair and in good humour, notwithstanding his disappointment,[224] which I am glad of.

He comes over next week to a house in this neighbourhood.

Pray come over this winter and join us.--I am, my dear Smith, ever yours,

DAVID HUME.[225]

While Pulteney was suggesting Smith's name for employment under the East India Company, Baron Mure was trying to secure his services as tutor to the Duke of Hamilton, and Lord Stanhope possibly offered him the position of tutor to his lordship's ward, the young Earl of Chesterfield. Baron Mure was one of the guardians of the young Duke of Hamilton (the son of the beautiful Miss Gunning), and had in that capacity had the chief responsibility in raising and carrying on the great Douglas cause. He was a man of great sagacity and weight, whom we have seen in communication with Hume and Oswald on economic subjects; he had long been also on terms of personal intimacy with Smith, and he seems to have been anxious in 1772 to send Smith abroad with the Duke of Hamilton, as he had already been sent abroad with the Duke of Buccleugh. Smith would appear to have been sounded on the subject, and even to have given what was considered a favourable reply, for Andrew Stuart, a fellow-guardian of the Duke along with Mure, writes the latter acknowledging receipt of his letter "intimating"--these are the words--"the practicability of having Mr.

Smith," but the Duke's mother (then d.u.c.h.ess of Argyle) and the Duke himself preferred Dr. John Moore, the author of _Zelucco_, who was the family medical attendant, and was indeed chosen because he could act in that capacity to his very delicate young charge, though he was strictly required to drop the "doctor," and was severely censured by the d.u.c.h.ess for a.s.sisting at a surgical operation in Geneva, inasmuch as if it got known that he was a medical man it would be a bar to their reception in the best society.[226] Accordingly Mure was told that it was "the united opinion of all concerned that matters go no further with Mr. Smith."

The circ.u.mstance that so wise and practical a head as Baron Mure's should have thought of Smith for this post is at least a proof that the Buccleugh tutorship had been a success, and that Smith was not considered by other men of the world who knew him well as being so unfit for the situation of travelling tutor as some of his friends thought him.

During this period of severe study in Kirkcaldy his fits of absence might be expected to recur occasionally, and Dr. Charles Rogers relates an anecdote of one of them, which may be repeated here, though Dr. Rogers omits mentioning any authority for it; and stories of that kind must naturally be accepted with scruples, because they are so apt to agglomerate round any person noted for the failing they indicate.

According to Dr. Rogers, however, Smith, during his residence in Kirkcaldy, went out one Sunday morning in his dressing-gown to walk in the garden, but once in the garden he went on to the path leading to the turnpike road, and then to the road itself, along which he continued in a condition of reverie till he reached Dunfermline, fifteen miles distant, just as the bells were sounding and the people were proceeding to church. The strange sound of the bells was the first thing that roused the philosopher from the meditation in which he was immersed.[227] The story is very open to criticism, but if correct it points to sleepless nights and an incapacity to get a subject out of the head, due to over-application.

The persistency of his occupation with his book, according to Robert Chambers in his _Picture of Scotland_, left a mark on the wall of his study which remained there till the room was repainted shortly before that author wrote of it in 1827. Chambers says that it was Smith's habit to compose _standing_, and to dictate to an amanuensis. He usually stood with his back to the fire, and unconsciously in the process of thought used to make his head vibrate, or rather, rub sidewise against the wall above the chimney-piece. His head being dressed, in the ordinary style of that period, with pomatum, could not fail to make a mark on the wall.

M'Culloch says Smith dictated the _Wealth of Nations_ but did not dictate the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_. Whether he had any external ground for making this a.s.sertion I cannot tell, and, apart from such, the probability would seem to be that if he dictated his lectures in Edinburgh to an amanuensis, as seems probable, as well as his _Wealth of Nations_, he would have done the same with his _Theory_. But M'Culloch professes to see internal evidences of this difference of manual method in the different style of the respective works. Moore met M'Culloch one evening at Longman's, and they were discussing writers who were in the habit of dictating as they composed. One of the party said the habit of dictating always bred a diffuse style, and M'Culloch supported this view by the example of Adam Smith, whose _Wealth of Nations_, he said, was very diffuse because it had been dictated, while his _Theory_, which was not dictated, was admirable in style. But in reality there is probably more diffuse writing in the _Theory_ than in the _Wealth of Nations_, which is for the most part packed tightly enough. Another Scotch critic, Archibald Alison the elder, the author of the _Essay on Taste_, even surpa.s.ses M'Culloch in his keenness in detecting the effects of this dictating habit. He says that Smith used to walk up and down the room while he dictated, and that the consequence is that his sentences are nearly all the same length, each containing as much as the amanuensis could write down while the author took a single turn.[228] This is excessive acuteness.

Smith's sentences are not by any means all of one length, or all of the same construction. It need only be added that the habit of dictating would in his case arise naturally from his slow and laboured penmanship.

As I have mentioned the house in which the _Wealth of Nations_ was composed, it may be added that it stood in the main street of the town, but its garden ran down to the beach, and that it was only pulled down in 1844, without anybody in the place realising at the moment, though it has been a cause of much regret since, that they were suffering their most interesting a.s.sociation to be destroyed. An engraving of it, however, exists.

FOOTNOTES:

[201] Adams's _Works_, ix. 589.

[202] Adams's _Works_, iii. 276.

[203] Secretary of the Royal Society. The letter was probably in acknowledgment of the intimation of his election as Fellow.

[204] Mr. Adams is Adam the architect, and Mrs. Montagu is the well-known Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu of Portman Square, whose hospitable house was a rival to any of the most brilliant salons of Paris.

[205] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library.

[206] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 390.

[207] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library.

[208] Carlyle's _Autobiography_, p. 489.

[209] Sinclair's _Life of Sir John Sinclair_, i. 37.

[210] Fraser's _Scotts of Buccleuch_, I. lx.x.xviii., II. 406.

[211] Brougham's _Men of Letters_, ii. 219.

[212] Brougham's Men of Letters, ii. 219.

[213] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 429.

[214] _Ibid._, ii. 433.

[215] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library. Partially published by Burton.

[216] Sir James Steuart's _Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy_ was published in 1767.

[217] Published by Professor Thorold Rogers in the _Academy_ of 28th February 1885.

[218] _Caldwell Papers_, iii. 207.

[219] _Wealth of Nations_, Book I. chap. xi.

[220] _Ibid._, Book IV. chap. vii.

[221] _Wealth of Nations_, Book IV. chap. vii.

[222] _Ibid._, Book V. chap. iii.

[223] _Ibid._, Book V. chap. i.

[224] From the suppression of the Indian supervisorship; see p. 255.

[225] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library.

[226] _Caldwell Papers_, i. 192.

[227] Rogers' _Social Life of Scotland_, iii. 181.

[228] Sinclair's _Old Times and Distant Places_, p. 9.

CHAPTER XVII

LONDON

1773-1776. _Aet._ 50-53

In the spring of 1773, Smith, having, as he thought, virtually completed the _Wealth of Nations_, set out with the ma.n.u.script for London, to give it perhaps some finishing touches and then place it in the hands of a publisher. But his labours had told so seriously on his health and spirits that he thought it not improbable he might die, and even die suddenly, before the work got through the press, and he wrote Hume a formal letter before he started on his journey, const.i.tuting him his literary executor, and giving him directions about the destination of the various unpublished ma.n.u.scripts that lay in his depositories:--

MY DEAR FRIEND--As I have left the care of all my literary papers to you, I must tell you that except those which I carry along with me, there are none worth the publishing but a fragment of a great work which contains a history of the astronomical systems that were successively in fashion down to the time of Descartes. Whether that might not be published as a fragment of an intended juvenile work I leave entirely to your judgment, tho' I begin to suspect myself that there is more refinement than solidity in some parts of it. This little work you will find in a thin folio paper book in my writing-desk in my book-room. All the other loose paper which you will find either in that desk or within the gla.s.s folding-doors of a bureau which stands in my bedroom, together with about eighteen thin paper folio books, which you will likewise find within the same gla.s.s folding-doors, I desire may be destroyed without any examination. Unless I die very suddenly, I shall take care that the Papers I carry with me shall be carefully sent to you.--I ever am, my dear friend, most faithfully yours,

ADAM SMITH.

EDINBURGH, _16th April 1773_.