That was his last meeting with them in the earthly meeting-place. He had gone to the other world before the next Sunday came round, having died on Saturday the 17th of July 1790. He was buried in the Canongate churchyard, near by the simple stone which Burns placed on the grave of Fergusson, and not far from the statelier tomb which later on received the remains of his friend Dugald Stewart. The grave is marked by an unpretending monument, stating that Adam Smith, the author of the Wealth of Nations, lies buried there.
His death made less stir or rumour in the world than many of his admirers expected. Sir Samuel Romilly, for example, writing on the 20th of August to a French lady who had wanted a copy of the new edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, says: "I have been surprised and, I own, a little indignant to observe how little impression his death has made here. Scarce any notice has been taken of it, while for above a year together after the death of Dr. Johnson nothing was to be heard of but panegyrics of him,—lives, letters, and anecdotes,—and even at this moment there are two more lives of him to start into existence. Indeed, one ought not perhaps to be very much surprised that the public does not do justice to the works of A. Smith since he did not do justice to them himself, but always considered his Theory of Moral Sentiments a much superior work to his Wealth of Nations."[372] Even in Edinburgh it seemed to make less impression than the death of a bustling divine would have made—certainly considerably less than the death of the excellent but far less illustrious Dugald Stewart a generation later. The newspapers had an obituary notice of two small paragraphs, and the only facts in his life the writers appear to have been able to find were his early abduction by the gipsies, of which both the Mercury and the Advertiser give a circumstantial account, and the characteristics which the Advertiser mentions, that "in private life Dr. Smith was distinguished for philanthropy, benevolence, humanity, and charity." Lord Cockburn, who was then beginning to read and think, was struck with the general ignorance of Smith's merits which his fellow-citizens exhibited shortly after his death. "The middle-aged seemed to me to know little about the founder of the science (political economy) except that he had recently been a Commissioner of Customs and had written a sensible book. The young—by which I mean the Liberal young of Edinburgh—lived upon him."[373] Stewart was no sooner dead than a monument was raised to him on one of the best sites in the city. The greater name of Smith has to this day no public monument in the city he so long adorned.
Black and Hutton were his literary executors, and published in 1795 the literary fragments which had been spared from the flames. By his will, dated 6th February 1790, he left his whole property to his cousin, David Douglas, afterwards Lord Reston, subject to the condition that the legatee should follow the instructions of Black and Hutton in disposing of the MSS. and writings, and pay an annuity of £20 a year to Mrs. Janet Douglas, and after her death, a sum of £400 to Professor Hugh Cleghorn of St. Andrews and his wife.[374] The property Smith left, however, was very moderate, and his friends could not at first help expressing some surprise that it should have been so little, because, though known to be very hospitable, he had never maintained anything more than a moderate establishment. But they had not then known, though many of them had long suspected, that he gave away large sums in secret charity. William Playfair mentions that Smith's friends, suspecting him of doing this, had sometimes in his lifetime formed special juries for the purpose of discovering evidences of it, but that the economist was "so ingenious in concealing his charity" that they never could discover it from witnesses, though they often found the strongest circumstantial evidence of it.[375] Dugald Stewart was more fortunate. He says: "Some very affecting instances of Mr. Smith's beneficence in cases where he found it impossible to conceal entirely his good offices have been mentioned to me by a near relation of his and one of his most confidential friends, Miss Ross, daughter of the late Patrick Ross, Esq., of Innernethy. They were all on a scale much beyond what would have been expected from his fortune, and were combined with circumstances equally honourable to the delicacy of his feelings and the liberality of his heart." One recalls the saying of Sir James Mackintosh, who was a student of Cullen and Black's in Smith's closing years, and used occasionally to meet the economist in private society. "I have known," said Mackintosh to Empson many years after this—"I have known Adam Smith slightly, Ricardo well, and Malthus intimately. Is it not something to say for a science that its three greatest masters were about the three best men I ever knew?"[376]
Smith never sat for his picture, but nevertheless we possess excellent portraits of him by two very talented artists who had many opportunities of seeing and sketching him. Tassie was a student at Foulis's Academy of Design in Glasgow College when Smith was there, and he may possibly even then have occasionally modelled the distinguished Professor, for we hear of models of Smith being in all the booksellers' windows in Glasgow at that time, and these models would, for a certainty, have been made in the Academy of Design. However that may be, Tassie executed in later days two different medallions of Smith. Raspe, in his catalogue of Tassie's enamels, describes one of these in a list of portraits of the largest size that that kind of work admitted of, as being modelled and cast by Tassie in his hard white enamel paste so as to resemble a cameo. From this model J. Jackson, R.A., made a drawing, which was engraved in stipple by C. Picart, and published in 1811 by Cadell and Davies. Line engravings of the same model were subsequently made by John Horsburgh and R.C. Bell for successive editions of the Wealth of Nations, and it is accordingly the best known, as well as probably the best, portrait of the author of that work. It is a profile bust showing rather handsome features, full forehead, prominent eyeballs, well curved eyebrows, slightly aquiline nose, and firm mouth and chin, and it is inscribed, "Adam Smith in his 64th year, 1787. Tassie F." In this medallion Smith wears a wig, but Tassie executed another, Mr. J.M. Gray tells us, in what he called "the antique manner," without the wig, and with neck and breast bare. "This work," says Mr. Gray, "has the advantage of showing the rounded form of the head, covered with rather curling hair and curving upwards from the brow to a point above the large ear, which is hidden in the other version."[377] It bears the same date as the former, and it appears never to have been engraved. Raspe mentions a third medallion of Smith in his catalogue of Tassie's enamels—"a bust in enamel, being in colour an imitation of chalcedony, engraved by F. Warner, after a model by J. Tassie,"—but this appears from Mr. Gray's account to be a reduced version of the first of the two just mentioned. Kay made two portraits of Smith: the first, done in 1787, representing him as he walked in the street, and the second, issued in 1790, and occasioned, no doubt, by his death, representing him as he has entered an office, probably the Custom House. There is a painting by T. Collopy in the National Museum of Antiquities at Edinburgh, which is thought to be a portrait of Adam Smith from the circumstance that the title Wealth of Nations appears on the back of a book on the table in the picture; but in the teeth of Stewart's very explicit statement that Smith never sat for his portrait, the inference drawn from that circumstance cannot but remain very doubtful. All other likenesses of Smith are founded on those of Tassie and Kay. Smith was of middle height, full but not corpulent, with erect figure, well-set head, and large gray or light blue eyes, which are said to have beamed with "inexpressible benignity." He dressed well—so well that nobody seems to have remarked it; for while we hear, on the one hand, of Hume's black-spotted yellow coat and Gibbon's flowered velvet, and on the other, of Hutton's battered attire and Henry Erskine's gray hat with the torn rim, we meet with no allusion to Smith's dress either for fault or merit.
Smith's books, which went on his death to his heir, Lord Reston, were divided, on the death of the latter, between his two daughters; the economic books going to Mrs. Bannerman, the wife of the late Professor Bannerman of Edinburgh, and the works on other subjects to Mrs. Cunningham, wife of the Rev. Mr. Cunningham of Prestonpans. Both portions still exist, the former in the Library of the New College, Edinburgh, to which they have been presented by Dr. D. Douglas Bannerman of Perth; and the latter in the possession of Professor Cunningham of Queen's College, Belfast, except a small number which were sold in Edinburgh in 1878, and a section, consisting almost exclusively of Greek and Latin classics, which Professor Cunningham has presented to the library of the college of which he is a member. Among other relics of Smith that are still extant are four medallions by Tassie, which very probably hung in his library. They are medallions of his personal friends: Black, the chemist; Hutton, the geologist; Dr. Thomas Reid, the metaphysician; and Andrew Lumisden, the Pretender's old secretary, and author of the work on the antiquities of Rome.
FOOTNOTES:
[365] "My dear Ascanius" are the words of the text, because Ascanius was the pseudonym under which the Earl happened to be writing.
[366] The Bee, 1791, iii. 166.
[367] Kerr's Memoirs of W. Smellie, i. 295.