orship of the letters, and they ceased to appear. Smith's
argument was that so long as the letters were attributed to men who
were not their writers, such as Lord Lansdowne or Burke, they
continued to go on, but immediately the true author was named they
stopped. The conversation passed on to Turgot and Voltaire and the
Duke of Richelieu, and its particulars have been stated already in
previous parts of this work.[352]

On Monday Rogers dined at Smith's house to meet Henry Mackenzie, as
had been arranged, and the other guests seem to have been the Mr. Muir
of the evening before and Mr. M'Gowan--John M'Gowan, Clerk of the
Signet, already referred to. Dr. Hutton came in afterwards and joined
them at tea. The chief share in the conversation seems to have been
taken by Mackenzie, who, as we know from Scott, was always "the life
of company with anecdotes and fun," and related on this occasion many
stories of second sight in the Highlands, and especially of the
eccentric Caithness laird, who used the pretension as a very effectual
instrument for maintaining authority and discipline among his
tenantry. They spoke much too about the poetesses,--Hannah More, and
Mrs. Charlotte Smith, and Mrs. John Hunter, the great surgeon's wife;
but it appears to have still been Mackenzie who bore the burden of the
talk. The only thing Rogers reports Smith as saying is a very ordinary
remark about Dr. Blair. They had been speaking, as was natural, about
the sermon which Rogers--and Mackenzie also--had heard the previous
afternoon on "Curiosity concerning the Affairs of Others," and one
passage in which, though it reads now commonplace enough in the
printed page, Rogers seems to have admired greatly. Smith observed
that Blair was too puffed up, and the worthy divine would have been
more or less than human if he had escaped the necessary effects of the
excessive popularity he so long enjoyed at once as a preacher and as a
critic. It will be remembered how Burns detested Blair's absurd
condescension and pomposity.

From Smith's the company seems to have proceeded in a body to a
meeting of the Royal Society, of which all were members except Muir
and Rogers himself. Before going Mackenzie repeated an epigram which
had been written on Smith sleeping at the meetings of this society,
but the epigram has not been preserved. Only seven persons were
present--Smith and his guests and the reader of the paper for the day,
who happened to be the economist,