the students of the morning class were in the habit of coming; and he
met with his private class twice a week on a different subject at 12.
Besides these engagements Smith seems to have occasionally read for an
hour like a tutor with special pupils; at least one is led to infer so
much from the remarks of a former pupil, who, under the _nom de plume_
of Ascanius, writes his reminiscences of his old master to the editor
of the _Bee_ in June 1791. This writer says that he went to Glasgow
College after he had gone through the classes at St. Andrews,
Edinburgh, and even Oxford, in order that he might, "after the manner
of the ancients, walk in the porticoes of Glasgow with Smith and with
Millar, and be imbued with the principles of jurisprudence and law and
philosophy"; and then he adds: "I passed most of my time at Glasgow
with those two first-rate men, and Smith read private lectures to me
on jurisprudence, and accompanied them with his commentaries in
conversation, exercises which I hope will give a colour and a
substance to my sentiments and to my reason that will be eternal."

There is no difficulty in identifying this enthusiastic disciple with
the eccentric and bustling Earl of Buchan, the elder brother of Lord
Chancellor Erskine, and of the witty and greatly beloved Harry Erskine
of the Scotch bar, and the subject of the Duchess of Gordon's
well-known _mot_: "The wit of your lordship's family has come by the
mother, and been all settled on the younger branches." We know that
this Earl of Buchan was a contributor to the _Bee_ under various
fictitious signatures, because he has himself republished some of his
contributions, and we know that he attended Smith's class at Glasgow,
because he says so in a letter to Pinkerton, the historian, mentioning
having seen in Smith's library at that time a book of which Pinkerton
could not find a single copy remaining anywhere--the memoirs of
Lockhart of Lee, Cromwell's ambassador to France, which had been
suppressed (as the Earl had been told by his maternal uncle, Sir James
Steuart, the economist) at the instance of Lockhart, the famous
advocate, afterwards Lord Covington, because the family had turned
Jacobite, and disliked the association with the Commonwealth.[38] The
Earl gives the year of his attendance at Glasgow as 1760, but he must
have continued there more than one session, for he attended Millar's
lectures as well as Smith's, and Millar was not there till the session