er
sister that Lady George Lennox and Sir Gilbert Elliot had happened to
meet while visiting her, and had talked of "Mr. Smith, the gentleman
that went abroad with the Duke of Buccleugh," saying many things in
his praise, but adding that he was the most absent man they ever knew.
Sir Gilbert mentioned that Mr. Damer (probably Mr. John Damer, Lord
Milton's son) had paid Smith a visit a few mornings before as he was
sitting down to breakfast, and falling into discourse Smith took a
piece of bread and butter, and after rolling it round and round put it
into the teapot and poured the water upon it. Shortly after he poured
out a cup, and on tasting it declared it was the worst tea he had
ever met with. "I have not the least doubt of it," said Mr. Damer,
"for you have made it of bread and butter instead of tea."[200]

The Duke of Buccleugh was married in London on the 3rd of May 1767 to
Lady Betsy, only daughter of the Duke of Montagu, and Smith probably
returned to Scotland immediately after that event. For in writing Hume
from Kirkcaldy on the 9th of June 1767, he mentions having now been
settled down to his work for about a month. Another circumstance
confirms this inference. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
of London on the 21st of May 1767, but was not admitted till the 27th
of May 1773, and that seems to imply that he had left London before
the former date, and never returned to it again till shortly before
the latter one.

FOOTNOTES:

[195] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 392.

[196] Ibid.

[197] _New York Evening Post._ Original in possession of Mr. David A.
Wells of Norwich, U.S.A.

[198] Lansdowne MSS.

[199] _Wealth of Nations_, Book IV. chap. vii.

[200] Lady Mary Coke's _Journal_, i. 141.

CHAPTER XVI

KIRKCALDY

1767-1773. _Aet._ 44-50

When Smith left Glasgow his mother and cousin went back again to
Kirkcaldy, and he now joined them and remained with them there for the
next eleven years. Hume, who thought the country an unsuitable place
for a man of letters, used every endeavour to persuade him to remove
to Edinburgh, but without success. The gaiety and fulness of city life
were evidently much less to him than they were to Hume, and he must
have found what sufficed him in the little town of his birth. He had
his work, he had his mother, he had his books, he had his daily walks
in the sea breeze, and he had Edinburgh always in the offing as a
place of occasional resort. He is