sgow, a friend of the
poet mentioned in the preface to the first edition as having supplied
many of the previously unpublished pieces which it contained. Craufurd
appears to have been an uncle of Sir John Dalrymple, and Sir John asks
Foulis to get Smith to write this dedication. "Sir," says he, in
December 1757, "I have changed my mind about the dedication of Mr.
Hamilton's poems. I would have it stand 'the friend of William
Hamilton,' but I assent to your opinion to have something more to
express Mr. Craufurd's character. I know none so able to do this as my
friend Mr. Smith. I beg it, therefore, earnestly that he will write
the inscription, and with all the elegance and all the feelingness
which he above the rest of mankind is able to express. This is a thing
that touches me very nearly, and therefore I beg a particular answer
as to what he says to it. The many happy and the many flattering hours
which he has spent with Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Craufurd makes me think
that he will account his usual indolence a crime upon this occasion. I
beg you will make my excuse for not wryting him this night, but then I
consider wryting to you upon this head to be wryting to him."[26] It
is unlikely that Smith would resist an appeal like this, and the
dedication bears some internal marks of his authorship. It describes
Mr. Craufurd as "the friend of Mr. Hamilton, who to that exact
frugality, that downright probity and pliancy of manners so suitable
to his profession, joined a love of learning and of all the ingenious
arts, an openness of hand and a generosity of heart that was far both
from vanity and from weakness, and a magnanimity that would support,
under the prospect of approaching and inevitable death, a most
torturing pain of body with an unalterable cheerfulness of temper, and
without once interrupting even to his last hour the most manly and the
most vigorous activity of business." This William Craufurd is
confounded by Lord Woodhouselee, and through him by others, with
Robert Crauford, the author of "The Bush aboon Traquair," "Tweedside,"
and other poems, who was also an intimate friend of Hamilton of
Bangour, but died in 1732.

Another link in the circumstantial evidence corroborating David
Laing's statement is the fact that Smith was certainly at the moment
in communication with Hamilton's personal friends, at whose instance
the volume of poems was published. Kames, who was then interesting
himself so actively in Smith's