Lecturer at Edinburgh

At Oxford

Smith returned to Scotland probably to get a Scotch university chair eventually. But he thought in the meantime to get a job as a traveling tutor to the Duke of Buccleugh, who was a ranking and wealthy young man. It was then a much-desired and a highly-paid job.

He afterwards gave up his chair for that job. While looking for that job, he stayed at home with his mother in Kirkcaldy. He had to remain there without any regular job for two years, from the autumns of 1746 to 1748.

The appointment never came. The ordinary parent did not see Smith as the most suitable person to entrust the care of spirited and thoughtless young gentlemen with, because of his absent manner and bad address.

But his visits to Edinburgh in looking for this work bore fruit by giving him=

• quite as good a start in life, and
• a shortcut to the professorial position he was best fitted for.

During the winter of 1748-49, he successfully began as a public lecturer by delivering a course on English literature. It was then a comparatively untried subject.

At the same time, he gave a first contribution to English literature by collecting and editing the poems of William Hamilton of Bangour. For both these undertakings, he was indebted to the advice and good offices of Lord Kames.

Lord Kames was then Mr. Henry Home. He was one of the leaders of the Edinburgh bar.

James Oswald of Dunnikier was=

• Smith’s friend and neighbour,
• among Kames’s most intimate friends, and
• the one who introduced Smith to Kames.

Kames was now 52. He had not yet written the works which later raised him to eminence. But in the literary society of the North, he had long enjoyed being the master of all questions of taste, from an epic poem to a garden plot. Voltaire laughs at him for trying to take this topic to the world. He had little Latin and no Greek because= - he was never in college, and - the classical quotations in his Sketches were translated for him by A.F. Tytler. Because of this deficiency, he focused more on English literature when it became the rage in Scotland after the Union. He was soon= - fighting with Bishop Butler in metaphysics, and - the accepted guide of the new Scotch poets in literary criticism. Hamilton of Bangour confesses that he himself learned to criticise from Henry Home.[19] Home’s place in the literature of Scotland corresponds with his place in its agriculture. He was the first of the improvers. Smith always held him in the deepest veneration. When Smith was complimented as one of great writers who reflected glory on Scotland, he said, “Yes, but we must all acknowledge Kames for our master."[20][Pg 32]

When Home found Smith already as well-versed in the English classics as himself, he suggested that Smith deliver lectures on English literature and criticism. The subject was fresh and fashionable. Stevenson was the Professor of Logic. He had already lectured on it in English. But nobody had yet given lectures on it open to the general public. English literature so much engaged the public’s interest then. The success of such a course seemed assured and was really successful. Among the attendees in the class were= Kames himself, students for the bar, like Alexander Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England, William Johnstone, He had a long influential part in Parliament as Sir William Pulteney. young ministers of the city like Dr. Blair, and He subsequently gave a similar course himself. many others, both young and old. It brought Smith a clear £100. The customary fee then was a guinea. In such a case, the audience would be more than 100. It was probably held in the College because Blair’s subsequent course was delivered there even before the establishment of any formal connection with the University by the creation of the professorship.

Smith’s lectures on English literature were burnt at his own request shortly before his death. Blair heard them at the time. He later used a part of them in preparing his own lectures on rhetoric. He speaks as if there was some hope at one time that Smith would publish them. But if Smith ever intended to, he was too preoccupied with and more interested in publishing a greater work. It has been suggested that they are practically reproduced in Blair’s lectures. Blair acknowledges having taken a few hints for his treatment of simplicity in style from [Pg 33] Smith’s lectures. His words are= “The current and following lectures discuss the general plain and simple characters of style of English authors. Several ideas about this have been taken from the learned and ingenious Dr. Adam Smith’s treatise on rhetoric, which he showed to me many years ago. I hope that he will give it to the public."[21] Many of Smith’s friends now considered this acknowledgment very insufficient. Hill was Blair’s biographer. He says Smith complained about it too. But it is very unlikely that Smith ever joined in any such complain because Henry Mackenzie told Samuel Rogers a contrary anecdote. Mackenzie was speaking of Smith’s wealth of conversation. He told how Smith often used to say to him= “Sir, you have said enough to make a book.” Smith then mentioned that Blair frequently introduced into his sermons some of Smith’s thoughts on jurisprudence. Blair gathered them from his conversation and told it to Smith. Smith replied “He is very welcome, there is enough left."[22] Blair intended to publish his own work on jurisprudence. Smith also heartily welcomed Blair to his thoughts on literature and style. But Blair probably was not as interested in it. Based on the two chapters where he cites Smith, Blair seem to have only borrowed what was already the commonest of property. He only took what his superficial mind could take. He left behind the pith of Smith’s thinking. To borrow a hat, two heads must be of the same size.

Therefore, Smith’s literary lectures would not be in Blair’s lectures. We could still collect an adequate view of his literary opinions= from incidental remarks in his writings or from recollections of his conversation preserved by friends. According to Wordsworth in the preface to the Lyrical Ballads= Except for David Hume, Smith was the worst critic that Scotland has produced. Such critics are a kind of weed which seem natural to Scotland’s soil. Today’s taste certainly goes against Smith’s judgments. He preferred the classical to the romantic school. Along with Voltaire, he thought= that Shakespeare had written good scenes but not a good play, and that though Shakespeare had more dramatic genius than Dryden, Dryden was the greater poet. He thought little of Milton’s minor poems, and less of the old ballads collected by Percy. But= He had great admiration for Pope. He believed Gray. If he had only written a little more, he would have been the greatest poet in the English language He thought Racine’s Phædrus was the finest tragedy in the world. His great test for literary beauty was that the beauty is always proportional to the difficulty perceived to be overcome. He mentions this in his Essay on the Imitative Arts,