on the subject; he has actually left
us a single essay, one of the most finished pieces of work he ever
did; and among his friends he was very fond in those days of speaking
and theorising on that topic, and supporting his conclusions by
illustrations from his wide reading and his observation of life. These
illustrations seem to have been drawn frequently from his experiences
of the French theatre.

The Earl of Buchan says that Smith had no ear for music, but there are
few things he seems to have nevertheless enjoyed better than the
opera, both serious and comic. He thought the "sprightly airs" of the
comic opera, though a more "temperate joy" than "the scenes of the
common comedy," were still a "most delicious" one.'[177] "They do not
make us laugh so loud, but they make us smile more frequently." And he
held the strongest opinion that music was always on virtue's side, for
he says the only musical passions are the good ones, the bad and
unsocial passions being, in his view, essentially unmelodious. But he
thought scenery was much abused on the French operatic stage. "In the
French operas not only thunder and lightning, storms and tempests, are
commonly represented in the ridiculous manner above mentioned, but
all the marvellous, all the supernatural of epic poetry, all the
metamorphoses of mythology, all the wonders of witchcraft and magic,
everything that is most unfit to be represented upon the stage, are
every day exhibited with the most complete approbation and applause of
that ingenious nation."[178]

Amid all this gaiety of salons and playhouses Smith found a graver
retreat with the philanthropic sect of the economists in the
apartments of the king's physician, Dr. Quesnay, in Paris and
Versailles. Dupont de Nemours told J.B. Say that he had often met
Smith at their little meetings, and that they looked on him as a
judicious and simple man, and apparently nothing more, for, he adds,
Smith had not at that time shown the stuff he was made of.[179] If
they did not then recognise his paramount capacity as they afterwards
did, there were some things about his opinions which Dupont thought
they learnt better then than they could from the great work in which
he subsequently expounded them. In a note to one of Turgot's works, of
which he was editor, Dupont appeals from an opinion expressed, or
understood to be expressed, by Smith in his published writings, to the
opinion on the same subject which he used to hear from