In the same letter he asks to be remembered to Benjamin Franklin (who had lately visited Glasgow), and also to Griffiths, the editor of the Monthly Review, which had just paid a handsome tribute to the Theory.
In the notes of lectures, given as we have seen about the time when the Poker Club was established, Smith admitted the necessity of a standing army, but seems to have thought that its abuse should be guarded against by a militia. The Poker Club proved little more than a convivial society, and felt the scarcity and dearness of claret more than the want of a national army. Lord Campbell says that when the duty on French wine was raised to pay for the American War, they “agreed to dissolve the ‘Poker,’ and to form another society which should exist without consumption of any excisable commodity.” When the duties were again reduced by Pitt’s French Treaty in 1786, a Younger Poker Club arose, but Pitt’s master, who had contributed so substantially to this revival of patriotism, was too old or too indifferent to become a member.
In one other important Edinburgh project the Glasgow professor played a prominent part. In 1755 an Edinburgh Review was started to supply the rising authors of North Britain with the stimulus of sympathetic criticism. Wedderburn, then a young advocate, was chosen editor; Robertson and Smith were contributors in chief. But only two numbers appeared of this precursor in name and in intention of the most famous and successful review ever launched in our islands. Smith’s two articles are of considerable, although of unequal, interest. The first and less important is a review of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary. “When we compare this book with other dictionaries,” writes the critic, “the merit of its author appears very extraordinary.” In previous English dictionaries the chief purpose had been to explain hard words and terms of art; “Mr. Johnson has extended his views much further, and has made a very full collection of all the different meanings of each English word, justified by examples from authors of good reputation.” The defects of the work consisted chiefly in the plan, which was not sufficiently grammatical. To show what he meant he took Johnson’s articles on but and humour, appending more philosophical and lucid articles of his own. Johnson seems to have taken no notice of these criticisms in later editions of the dictionary. We may observe in passing that Smith’s but is better than his humour. He seems singularly mistaken when he observes that “a man of wit is as much above a man of humour as a gentleman is above a buffoon.” In Scotland, he thinks, the usefulness of the Dictionary will soon be felt, “as there is no standard of correct language in conversation.”
A far more remarkable contribution is a letter to the editors, which appeared in the second number. It is a protest against the reviewers confining themselves to accounts of books published in Scotland, a country “which is but just beginning to attempt figuring in the learned world.” He proposes therefore that they should enlarge their scope, and observe with regard to Europe the same plan that was being followed with regard to England, that is to say, examine all books of permanent value while contriving to take notice “of every Scotch production that is tolerably decent.” Smith illustrated his plea by a very luminous and masterly survey of French literature, and a comparison of the French, German, and Italian genius with the English.
The review was intended to appear every six months, but it never reached a third number, either because it was not well received by the public, or because a formidable theologian spied heresy lurking in its pages.
It was at this time that the General Assembly was proposing to pass a censure on Hume’s Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and to excommunicate the author. Hume wrote to Allan Ramsay in Rome: “You may tell that reverend gentleman the Pope, that there are men here who rail at him, and yet would be much greater persecutors had they equal power. The last Assembly sat on me. They did not propose to burn me, because they cannot, but they intended to give me over to Satan. My friends prevailed, and my damnation has accordingly been postponed a twelve-month, but next Assembly will surely be upon me.” Lord Kames was also attacked; but Smith seems to have escaped, though his turn was to come later.
The pupil of Hutcheson was also in many ways the philosophical disciple and ally of Hume. Their intercourse during all these years was close and constant. They paid mutual visits, and interchanged many letters, too few of which have been preserved. Hume had been abroad, or at Ninewells, during most of Smith’s stay in Edinburgh, and had only just made Edinburgh his home when Smith obtained the professorship at Glasgow; but, as Mr. Rae notes, before a year was out, Smith’s “dear sir” had ripened into “my dearest friend,” and on these terms the two philosophers remained until death parted them.
We have seen how in the spring of 1759 Charles Townshend was much taken with the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and told Oswald he would put his young ward the Duke of Buccleuch under the author’s care. Hume did not at first believe that Townshend would persevere, or if he did, that he would offer such terms as would tempt Smith from Glasgow. But on this occasion he was in earnest and never relinquished the idea, anxious, it is said, to connect the fleeting fame of a parliamentarian with the lasting renown of a philosopher. Townshend had married the widowed Countess of Dalkeith. Her eldest son, the Duke of Buccleuch, was then a boy at Eton, under Hallam, father of the historian. The time when his stepson would leave school was still distant, but Townshend had made up his mind to send the boy abroad. In England it was becoming more and more the fashion for the sons of the nobility to travel abroad when they left school, instead of going to one of the universities. It was thought that they returned home much improved by their travels, and with some knowledge of one or two living languages, whereas if they went to Oxford or Cambridge they would learn nothing but idleness and dissipation. Adam Smith himself afterwards came to the conclusion that foreign travel was no substitute for a sound university training. The schoolboy, he wrote after his continental tour, “commonly returns home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any serious application either to study or business, than he could well have become in so short a time had he lived at home.... Nothing but the discredit into which the universities had fallen could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a practice.”[20]
In the summer of 1759 Townshend went to see Smith at Glasgow, and apparently prevailed, for in the following September Smith wrote to him about some books which he had been getting for Buccleuch, as if he were already in the position of an educational adviser to the boy. As might have been expected of one whom Burke immortalised as “the delight and ornament of the House, and the charm of every private society which he honoured with his presence,” Townshend captivated Glasgow. “Everybody here remembers you with the greatest admiration and affection.”
Smith was doubtless informed from time to time of the boy’s progress, but we hear no more of the subject for four years. In the early part of 1763 he invited Hume to pay a visit to Glasgow. Hume was then in Edinburgh; he had just brought out two volumes of his History, and was drinking the nectar of general applause. At the end of March he replied with a bantering reference, perhaps, to his friend’s economic studies: “I set up a chaise in May next, which will give me the liberty of travelling about, and you may be sure a journey to Glasgow will be one of the first I shall undertake. I intend to require with great strictness an account how you have been employing your leisure, and I desire you to be ready for that purpose. Woe be to you if the Balance be against you. Your friends here will also expect that I should bring you with me. It seems to me very long since I saw you.” But in the summer Lord Hertford was appointed Ambassador to the Court of France, and Hume accepted the post of Secretary to the British Embassy at Paris, “with great prospects and expectations.” He told his friend not to expect him back for some time; “but we may meet abroad.” And so they did; for, a couple of months later, Smith received the following letter:—