SMITH INTERVIEWED

In his letter to Cadell Smith reproaches himself with his idleness during his first few years in Edinburgh.  He had bought a good many new books in London, or new editions of old ones, and, says he, “The amusement I found in reading and diverting myself with them debauched me from my proper business, the preparing a new edition of the Wealth of Nations.”  While he was engaged in this dissipation of miscellaneous reading a young interviewer from Glasgow, who happened to be much in his company in connection with business in the year 1780, elicited his opinions on most of the famous authors of the world, noted them down, and gave them to the public after Smith’s death in the pages of the Bee for 1791.  In introducing these recollections the editor of the Bee, Dr. James Anderson—­author of Ricardo’s rent theory—­says that even if they had not been sent to him with the strongest assurances of authenticity, he could entertain no doubt on that point after their perusal from the coincidence of the opinions reported in them with those he himself had heard Smith express.  The writer, who takes the name Amicus, describes himself as “young, inquisitive, and full of respect” for Smith, and says their conversation, after they finished their business, always took a literary turn, and Smith was “extremely communicative, and delivered himself with a freedom and even boldness quite opposite to the apparent reserve of his appearance.”

The first author Amicus mentions is Dr. Johnson, of whom he thought Smith had a “very contemptuous opinion.”  “I have seen that creature,” said Smith, “bolt up in the midst of a mixed company, and without any previous notice fall upon his knees behind a chair, repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and then resume his seat at table.  He has played this trick over and over, perhaps five or six times in the course of an evening.  It is not hypocrisy but madness.  Though an honest sort of man himself, he is always patronising scoundrels.  Savage, for example, whom he so loudly praises, was but a worthless fellow; his pension of L50 never lasted him longer than a few days.  As a sample of his economy you may take a circumstance that Johnson himself once told me.  It was at that period fashionable to wear scarlet cloaks trimmed with gold lace, and the Doctor met him one day just after he had got his pension with one of those cloaks on his back, while at the same time his naked toes were sticking through his shoes.”  He spoke highly, however, of Johnson’s political pamphlets on the American question, in spite of his disapproval of their opinions, and he was especially charmed with the pamphlet about the Falkland Islands, because it presented in such forcible language the madness of modern wars.

“Contemptuous opinion” is too strong an expression for Smith’s view of Johnson, but it is certain he never rated him so high as the world did then or does now.  He told Samuel Rogers that he was astonished at Johnson’s immense reputation, but, on the other hand, he frequently praised some of the Doctor’s individual writings very highly, as he did to this young gentleman of Glasgow.  He once said to Seward that Johnson’s preface to Shakespeare was “the most manly piece of criticism that was ever published in any country."[316]