acter, at which, if not the very words reported by
Scott, then words quite as strong must manifestly have passed between
them; that their host declared Johnson to be entirely in the wrong,
and that Smith withdrew from the company, and would very possibly go,
as the story relates, to another company, his Scotch friends at the
British Coffee-House in Cockspur Street, then the great Scotch
resort,--a house which was kept by the sister of his friend Bishop
Douglas, which was frequented much by Wedderburn, John Home, and
others, and to which Smith's own letters used to be addressed.

One thing remains to be said: if the world has never been able to
suffer this little morsel of scandal to be forgotten, the two
principals in the feud themselves were able to forget it entirely.
Smith was at a later period in the habit of meeting Johnson constantly
at the table of common friends in London, and was elected in 1775 a
member of Johnson's famous club, which would of course have been
impossible--and indeed in so small a society never have been thought
of--had the slightest remnant of animosity continued on either side.
Johnson, it is true, was still occasionally rude to Smith, as he was
occasionally rude to every other member of the club; and certainly
Smith never established with him anything of the cordial personal
friendship he enjoyed with Burke, Gibbon, or Reynolds; but their
common membership in the Literary Club is proof of the complete burial
of their earlier quarrel.

FOOTNOTES:

[120] Stewart's _Life of Smith; Works_, ed. Hamilton, vol. x. p. 95.

[121] Boswell's _Johnson_, ed. Hill, iii. 331.

[122] _Ibid._ i. 427.

[123] Boswell's _Johnson_, ed. Hill, v. 369.

[124] Book IV. chap. vii.

[125] Russell's _Life of Moore_, p. 338.

CHAPTER XI

LAST YEAR IN GLASGOW

1763. _Aet._ 40

In 1763 the Rev. William Ward of Broughton, chaplain to the Marquis of
Rockingham, was bringing out his _Essay on Grammar_, which Sir William
Hamilton thought "perhaps the most philosophical essay on the English
language extant," and sent an abstract of it to Smith through a common
friend, Mr. George Baird, to whom Smith wrote the following letter on
the subject:--[126]

GLASGOW, _7th February 1763_.

DEAR SIR--I have read over the contents of your Friend's
work with very great pleasure; and heartily wish it was in
my power to give, or to procure him all the encouragement
which his ingenuity an