s a small head of Adam Smith in ivory.[58]

In the Foulis press and the Academy of Design Smith took a particular
interest. He was himself a book-fancier, fond of fine editions and
bindings, and he once said to Smellie the printer, whom he observed
admiring some of the books in his library, "I am a beau in nothing but
my books." And he was a man, as Dugald Stewart informs us, with a
carefully-cultivated taste for the fine arts, who was considered by
his contemporaries an excellent judge of a picture or a sculpture,
though in Stewart's opinion he appeared interested in works of art
less as instruments of direct enjoyment than as materials for
speculative discussions about the principles of human nature involved
in their production. Smith seems to have been one of Foulis's chief
practical advisers in the work of the Academy of Design, in settling
such details, for example, as the pictures which ought to be selected
to be copied by the pupils, or the subjects which ought to be chosen
for original work from Plutarch or other classical sources, and which
would be most likely to suit modern taste.

Sir John Dalrymple, who appears to have been one of Foulis's
associates in the enterprise, and to have taken an active concern in
the sale of the productions of the Academy in its Edinburgh agency
shop, writes Foulis on the 1st of December 1757 regarding the kind of
work that ought to be sent for sale there. "In the History pictures
that you send in, I beg you will take the advice of Mr. Smith and Dr.
Black. Your present scheme should be to execute not what you think the
best, but what will sell the best. In the first you may be the better
judge, since you are the master of a great Academa, but in the last I
think their advice will be of use to you."[59] The letter concludes:
"Whether it is an idea or not, I am going to give you a piece of
trouble. Be so good as make out a catalogue of your pictures, and as
far as you can of your busts, books of drawings, and prints. Secondly,
your boys, and how employed. Thirdly, the people who have studied
under you with a view to the mechanical art. And lastly, give some
account of the prospects which you think you have of being of use
either to the mechanical or to the fine arts of your country. Frame
this into a memorial and send it to me. I shall have it tryed here by
some who wish well to you, and as I go to London in the spring, I
shall, together with Mr. Wedderburn and Mr. Elliot, conside