for
the erection of the first permanent theatre in Glasgow. The affair
originated with five respectable and wealthy merchants, who were
prepared to build the house at their own expense, the leading spirit
of the five being Robert Bogle of Shettleston, who had himself, we are
told by Dr. Carlyle, played "Sempronius" in a students' performance of
_Cato_ within the walls of Glasgow College in 1745. Carlyle played the
title _role_, and another divinity student, already mentioned as a
college friend of Smith's, Dr. Maclaine of the Hague, played a minor
part. But an amateur representation of an unexceptionable play under
the eye of the professors was one thing, the erection of a public
playhouse, catering like other public playhouses for the too
licentious taste of the period, was another, and the project of Mr.
Bogle and his friends in 1762 excited equal alarm in the populace of
the city, in the Town Council, and in the University. The Council
refused to sanction a site for the theatre within the city bounds, so
that the promoters were obliged to build it a mile outside; but the
anger of the multitude pursued them thither, and on the very eve of
its opening in 1764 by a performance in which Mrs. Bellamy was to play
the leading part, it was set on fire by a mob, at the instigation of a
wild preacher, who said he had on the previous night been present in a
vision at an entertainment in hell, and the toast of the evening,
proposed in most flattering terms from the chair, was the health of
Mr. Millar, the maltster who had sold the site for this new temple of
the devil.

During the two years between the projection of this building and its
destruction it caused the Senate of the College no common anxiety, and
Smith went along with them in all they did. On the 25th of November
1762 he was appointed, with the Principal and two other professors, as
a committee, to confer with the magistrates concerning the most proper
methods of preventing the establishment of a playhouse in Glasgow, and
at the same time to procure all the information in their power
concerning the privileges of the University of Oxford with respect to
their ability to prevent anything of that kind being established
within their bounds, and concerning the manner in which those
privileges, if they existed, were made effectual. On the
recommendation of this committee the University agreed to memorialise
the Lord Advocate on the subject, and to ask the magistrates of th