ebrated in that character by Goldsmith in the poem
"Retaliation," as "the scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks." I
have gone over the names of those who might be Smith's contemporaries
at Balliol as they appear in Mr. Foster's list of _Alumni Oxonienses_,
and they were a singularly undistinguished body of people. Smith and
Douglas themselves are indeed the only two of them who seem to have
made any mark in the world at all.

An allusion has been made to the Scottish dialect of the Snell
exhibitioners; it may be mentioned that Smith seems to have lost the
broad Scotch at Oxford without, like Jeffrey, contracting the narrow
English; at any rate Englishmen, who visited Smith after visiting
Robertson or Blair, were struck with the pure and correct English he
spoke in private conversation, and he appears to have done so without
giving any impression of constraint.

Smith returned to Scotland in August 1746, but his name remained on
the Oxford books for some months after his departure, showing
apparently that he had not on leaving come to a final determination
against going back. His friends at home are said to have been most
anxious that he should continue at Oxford; that would naturally seem
to open to him the best opportunities either in the ecclesiastical
career for which they are believed to have destined him, or in the
university career for which nature herself designed him. But both
careers were practically barred against him by his objection to taking
holy orders, the great majority of the Oxford Fellowships being at
that time only granted upon condition of ordination, and Smith
concluded that the best prospect for him was after all the road back
to Scotland. And he never appears to have set foot in Oxford again.
When he became Professor at Glasgow he was the medium of intercourse
between the Glasgow Senate and the Balliol authorities, but beyond the
occasional interchange of letters which this business required, his
relations with the Southern University appear to have continued
completely suspended. Nor did Oxford, on her part, ever show any
interest in him. Even after he had become perhaps her greatest living
alumnus, she did not offer him the ordinary honour of a doctor's
degree.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Rogers's edition of the _Wealth of Nations_, I. vii.

[11] Laing MSS., Edinburgh University.

[12] Stewart's _Life of Adam Smith_, p. 8.

[13] Tyerman's _Wesley_, i. 66.

[14] Brougham, _Men of Letters