Life of Adam Smith

The first author Amicus mentions is Dr. Johnson, of whom he thought Smith had a “very contemptuous opinion.” “I have seen that creature,” said Smith, “bolt up in the midst of a mixed company, and without any previous notice fall upon his knees behind a chair, repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and then resume his seat at table. He has played this trick over and over, perhaps five or six times in the course of an evening. It is not hypocrisy but madness. Though an honest sort of man himself, he is always patronising scoundrels. Savage, for example, whom he so loudly praises, was but a worthless fellow; his pension of £50 never lasted him longer than a few days. As a sample of his economy you may take a circumstance that Johnson himself once told me. It was at that period fashionable to wear scarlet cloaks trimmed with gold lace, and the Doctor met him one day just after he had got his pension with one of those cloaks on his back, while at the same time his naked toes were sticking through his shoes.” He spoke highly, however, of Johnson’s political pamphlets on the American question, in spite of his disapproval of their opinions, and he was especially charmed with the pamphlet about the Falkland Islands, because it presented in such forcible language the madness of modern wars.

Smith often praised Swift, and praised him highly, saying he wanted nothing but inclination to have become one of the greatest of all poets. “But in place of that he is only a gossiper, writing merely for the entertainment of a private circle.” He regarded Swift, however, as a pattern of correctness both in style and sentiment, and he read to his young friend some of the short poetical addresses to
Stella. Amicus says Smith expressed particular pleasure with one couplet—

Say, Stella, feel you no content,

Reflecting on a life well spent?

But it was more probably not so much of these two lines as of the whole passage of which they are the opening that Smith was thinking. He thought Swift a great master of the poetic art, because he produced an impression of ease and simplicity, though the work of composition was to him a work of much difficulty, a verse coming from him, as Swift himself said, like a guinea. The Dean’s masterpiece was, in Smith’s opinion, the lines on his own death, and his poetry was on the whole more correct after he settled in Ireland, and was surrounded, as he himself said, “only by humble friends.”

When asked about Shakespeare Smith quoted with apparent approval Voltaire’s remarks that
Hamlet was the dream of a drunken savage, and that Shakespeare had good scenes but not a good play; but Amicus gathered that he would not permit anybody else to pass such a verdict with impunity, for when he himself once ventured to say something derogatory of
Hamlet, Smith replied, “Yes, but still
Hamlet is full of fine passages.” This opinion of Shakespeare was of course common to most of the great men of last century. They were not so much insensible to the poet’s genius as perplexed by it. His plays were full of imagination, dramatic power, natural gifts of every kind—that was admitted; but then they seemed wild, unregulated, savage—even “drunken savage,” to use Voltaire’s expression; they were magnificent, but they were not poetry, for they broke every rule of the art, and poetry after all was an art. And so we find Addison at the beginning of last century writing on the greatest English poets and leaving the name of Shakespeare out; and we find Charles James Fox, a true lover of letters, telling Reynolds at the close of the century that Shakespeare’s reputation would have stood higher if he had never written
Hamlet. Smith thought Shakespeare had more than ten times the dramatic genius of Dryden, but Dryden had more of the poetic art.

He read over to Amicus Milton’s
L’ Allegro and
Il Penseroso, and explained the respective beauties of each; but he added that all the rest of Milton’s short poems were trash. He could not imagine what made Johnson praise the poem on the death of Mrs. Killigrew, and compare it with
Alexander’s Feast. Johnson’s praise of it had induced him to read the poem over and with attention twice, but he could not discover even a spark of merit in it. On the other hand, Smith considered Gray’s
Odes, which Johnson had damned, to be the standard of lyric excellence.

The Gentle Shepherd he did not admire much. He preferred the
Pastor Fido, of which, says Amicus, he “spoke with rapture,” and the
Eclogues of Virgil. Amicus put in a word in favour of the poet of his own country, but Smith would not yield a point. “It is the duty of a poet,” he said, “to write like a gentleman. I dislike that homely style which some think fit to call the language of nature and simplicity and so forth. In Percy’s
Reliques too a few tolerable pieces are buried under a heap of rubbish. You have read perhaps
Adam Bell, Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudesley.” “Yes,” said Amicus. “Well then,” continued Smith, “do you think that was worth printing?”

Pope was a great favourite with him as a poet, and he knew by heart many passages from his poems, though he disliked Pope’s personal character as a man, saying he was all affectation, and speaking of his letter to Arbuthnot when the latter was dying as a consummate piece of canting. Dryden was another of his favourite poets, and when he was speaking one day in high praise of Dryden’s fables, Amicus mentioned Hume’s objections, and was told, “You will learn more as to poetry by reading one good poem than by a thousand volumes of criticism.” Smith regarded the French theatre as the standard of dramatic excellence.

Amicus concludes his reminiscences by quoting one of Smith’s observations on a political subject. He said that at the beginning of the reign of George the Third the dissenting ministers used to receive £2000 a year from Government, but that the Earl of Bute had most improperly deprived them of this allowance, and that he supposed this to be the real motive of their virulent opposition to Government.

Professor B. Faujas Saint Fond, Professor of Geology in the Museum of Natural History at Paris and member of the National Institute of France, paid a visit to Edinburgh in October or November 1782 in the course of a tour he made through Scotland, and received many civilities from Adam Smith, as he mentions in the account of his travels which he published in 1783. Saint Fond says there was nobody in Edinburgh he visited more frequently than Smith, and nobody received him more kindly or studied more to procure for him every information and amusement Edinburgh could afford. He was struck with Smith’s numerous and, as he says, excellently chosen library. “The best French authors occupied a distinguished place in his library, for he was fond of our language.” “Though advanced in years, he still possessed a fine figure; the animation of his countenance was striking when he spoke of Voltaire.” I have already quoted the remark he made (p. 190).

One evening when the geologist was at tea with him, Smith spoke about Rousseau also, and spoke of him “with a kind of religious respect.” “Voltaire,” he said, “set himself to correct the vices and follies of mankind by laughing at them, and sometimes by treating them with severity, but Rousseau conducts the reader to reason and truth by the attractions of sentiment and the force of conviction. His ‘Social Compact’ will one day avenge all the persecutions he suffered.”