where he used to set
Voltaire, at the head of all living men of letters.

EDINBURGH, _18th December 1788_.

MY DEAR FRIEND--I have ten thousand apologies to make for
not having long ago returned you my best thanks for the very
agreeable present you made me of the three last volumes of
your History. I cannot express to you the pleasure it gives
me to find that by the universal consent of every man of
taste and learning whom I either know or correspond with, it
sets you at the very head of the whole literary tribe at
present existing in Europe.--I ever am, my dear friend, most
affectionately yours,

ADAM SMITH.[349]

In this letter Smith makes no complaint of his condition of health,
but he seems to have got worse again in the course of the winter, for
we find Gibbon writing Cadell, the bookseller, with some apparent
anxiety on the 11th of February 1789: "If you can send me a good
account of Adam Smith, there is no man more sincerely interested in
his welfare than myself." If, however, he were ill then, he recovered
in the summer, and was in excellent spirits in July, when Samuel
Rogers saw him often during a week he spent in Edinburgh.

FOOTNOTES:

[342] Pellew's _Life of Sidmouth_, i. 151.

[343] Wilberforce's _Correspondence_, i. 40.

[344] Bowring's Memoir of Bentham, Bentham's _Works_, x. 173.

[345] Wilberforce's _Correspondence_, i. 40.

[346] The _Bee_, vol. in. p. 165.

[347] Glasgow College Minutes.

[348] Morrison MSS.

[349] Gibbon's _Miscellaneous Works_, ii. 429.

CHAPTER XXX

VISIT OF SAMUEL ROGERS

1789

The author of the _Pleasures of Memory_, going to Scotland to make the
home tour, as it was called, then much in vogue, brought with him
letters of introduction to Smith from Dr. Price and Dr. Kippis, the
editor of the _Biographia Britannica_. The poet was then a young man
of twenty-three, who had published nothing but his _Ode to
Superstition_, and these old Unitarian friends of his father were as
yet his chief acquaintances in the world of letters. Their names,
notwithstanding the disparaging allusion Smith makes to Price in a
letter previously given, won for Rogers the kindest possible
reception, and even a continuous succession of civilities, of which he
has left a grateful record in the journal he kept during his tour.
This journal has been published in Mr. Clayden's _Early Tears of
Samuel Rogers_, and a few add