aid of happened on the 27th of November, and
Smith was, without any opposition, appointed Craigie's successor on
the 29th of April 1752. It would appear from this letter as if Cullen
had heard from his colleague, Professor Lindsay, of a possible rival
to Smith for that chair in the person of Mr. Elliot--no doubt Mr.
Gilbert Elliot, a man of brilliant parts and accomplishments, who
afterwards attained high political eminence as Sir Gilbert Elliot, but
who was at this time a young advocate at the Edinburgh bar, with no
liking for law and a great liking for letters and philosophy. Smith,
however, who was a personal friend of Elliot's, knew that the latter
had no such designs, and eventually his own candidature was unopposed.
But in anticipation of this result, the keenest contest was carried on
all winter over the election to the Logic chair, which he was to
leave. David Hume came forward as a candidate, and there is an
erroneous, though curiously well-supported tradition that Edmund Burke
was a candidate also. One of Burke's biographers, Bisset, states that
Burke actually applied for the post, but applied too late.[29] Another
of his biographers, Prior, says that Burke being in Scotland at the
time, took some steps for the place, but finding his chances hopeless,
withdrew;[30] while Professor Jardine, a subsequent occupier of the
chair himself, asserts that Burke was thought of by some of the
electors, but never really came forward.[31] But Smith, who was not
only the previous occupant of the office, but, as Professor of Moral
Philosophy, was one of the electors of his successor, stated
explicitly to Dugald Stewart (as Stewart wrote to Prior[32]) "that the
story was extremely current, but he knew of no evidence on which it
rested, and he suspected it took its rise entirely from an opinion
which he had himself expressed at Glasgow upon the publication of
Burke's book on the _Sublime and Beautiful_, that the author of that
book would be a great acquisition to the College if he would accept of
a chair." Had anything been known in Glasgow of Burke's candidature
for a chair there five years before, it would unquestionably be
recollected on the occasion of the publication of so notable a work,
but Burke's very name was so unfamiliar to the circle interested in
the election that when Hume first met him in London in 1759, he
mentions him in a letter to Smith as "a Mr. Burke, an Irish
gentleman who has written a very pretty book on