mith was particularly fond--Wilkie, the eccentric author of
the _Epigoniad_--was living a few miles out as minister of the parish
of Ratho. Wilkie always said that Smith had far more originality and
invention than Hume, and that while Hume had only industry and
judgment, Smith had industry and genius. His mind was at least the
more constructive of the two. A remark of Smith's about Wilkie has
also been preserved, and though it is of no importance, it may be
repeated. Quoting Lord Elibank, he said that whether it was in learned
company or unlearned, wherever Wilkie's name was mentioned it was
never dropped soon, for everybody had much to say about him.[75] But
that was probably due to his oddities as much as anything else. Wilkie
used to plough his own glebe with his own hands in the ordinary
ploughman's dress, and it was he who was the occasion of the joke
played on Dr. Roebuck, the chemist, by a Scotch friend, who said to
him as they were passing Ratho glebe that the parish schools of
Scotland had given almost every peasant a knowledge of the classics,
and added, "Here, for example, is a man working in the field who is a
good illustration of that training; let us speak with him." Roebuck
made some observation about agriculture. "Yes, sir," said the
ploughman, "but in Sicily they had a different method," and he quoted
Theocritus, to Roebuck's great astonishment.

Among Smith's chief Edinburgh friends at this period was one of his
former pupils, William Johnstone--son of Sir James Johnstone of
Westerhall, and nephew of Lord Elibank--who was then practising as an
advocate at the Scotch bar, but ultimately went into Parliament,
married the greatest heiress of the time, Miss Pulteney, niece of the
Earl of Bath, and long filled an honoured and influential place in
public life as Sir William Pulteney. He was, as even Wraxall admits, a
man of "masculine sense" and "independent as well as upright"
character, and he devoted special attention to all economic and
financial questions. It was Pulteney who in his speech on the
suspension of cash payments by the Bank of England in 1797--in which
he proposed the establishment of another bank--quoted from some
unknown source the memorable saying which is generally repeated as if
it were his own, that Smith "would persuade the present generation and
govern the next." He quoted the words as something that had been "well
said." Between him and Smith there prevailed a warm and affectionate