inly of professors in the University--Cullen, Black, Wilson
the astronomer; Robert Simson, Leechman the divinity professor and
principal; Millar, and indeed nearly the whole Senatus; with a few
merchants or country gentlemen of literary tastes such as William
Craufurd, the friend of Hamilton of Bangour; William Mure of Caldwell,
M.P. for Renfrewshire; Sir John Dalrymple, the historian, who was a
proprietor in the West country; John Callander of Craigforth, the
antiquary; Thomas Miller, Town Clerk of Glasgow, and afterwards Lord
Justice-Clerk of Scotland; Robert Foulis, the printer; James Watt, who
said he derived much benefit from it; Robert Bogle of Shettleston, the
promoter of the theatre already mentioned; David Hume, and the Earl of
Buchan, elected while residing as a student in 1762.

The Literary Society was founded in 1752, and met every Thursday
evening from November to May at half-past six. Its minutes are
probably still in existence somewhere, but a few extracts from them
have been published by the Maitland Club,[71] and from them we learn
that Smith was one of the first contributors to its proceedings. Early
in its first session--on the 23rd of January 1753--Professor Adam
Smith is stated to have read an account of some of Mr. David Hume's
Essays on Commerce. These essays had then just appeared; and they had
probably been seen by Smith before their publication, for in September
1752 Hume writes Smith asking him for any corrections he had to
suggest on the old edition of the Political Essays with which the
Commercial Essays were incorporated. We have seen Hume submitting one
of these Commercial Essays in 1750 to Oswald and Mure, and when we
find him in 1752 asking for suggestions from Smith on the essays
already printed, we may safely infer that he had also asked and
received suggestions on the new essays which had never been published.

The Maitland Club volume gives us no information about the papers read
in this society after the first six months, except those read by
Foulis, but no doubt Smith read other papers in the remaining ten
years of his connection with the society. Its debates were often very
keen; the metaphysical and theological combats between Professor
Millar--a most brilliant debater--and Dr. Reid, the father of the
common-sense philosophy, were famous in their day; and on one occasion
tradition informs us that Smith engaged in a strenuous discussion on
some subject for a whole evening agains