Amicus then inquired of Smith his opinion of his countryman Dr. Campbell, author of the Political Survey, and Smith replied that he had never met him but once, but that he was one of those authors who wrote on from one end of the week to the other, and had therefore with his own hand produced almost a library of books.  A gentleman who met Campbell out at dinner said he would be glad to have a complete set of his works, and next morning a cart-load came to his door, and the driver’s bill was L70.  He used to get a few copies of each of his works from the printers, and keep them for such chances as that.  A visitor one day, casting his eye on these books, asked Campbell, “Have you read all these books?” “Nay,” said the other, “I have written them.”

Smith often praised Swift, and praised him highly, saying he wanted nothing but inclination to have become one of the greatest of all poets.  “But in place of that he is only a gossiper, writing merely for the entertainment of a private circle.”  He regarded Swift, however, as a pattern of correctness both in style and sentiment, and he read to his young friend some of the short poetical addresses to Stella.  Amicus says Smith expressed particular pleasure with one couplet—­

    Say, Stella, feel you no content,
    Reflecting on a life well spent?

But it was more probably not so much of these two lines as of the whole passage of which they are the opening that Smith was thinking.  He thought Swift a great master of the poetic art, because he produced an impression of ease and simplicity, though the work of composition was to him a work of much difficulty, a verse coming from him, as Swift himself said, like a guinea.  The Dean’s masterpiece was, in Smith’s opinion, the lines on his own death, and his poetry was on the whole more correct after he settled in Ireland, and was surrounded, as he himself said, “only by humble friends.”

Among historians Smith rated Livy first either in the ancient or the modern world.  He knew of no other who had even a pretence to rival him, unless David Hume perhaps could claim that honour.

When asked about Shakespeare Smith quoted with apparent approval Voltaire’s remarks that Hamlet was the dream of a drunken savage, and that Shakespeare had good scenes but not a good play; but Amicus gathered that he would not permit anybody else to pass such a verdict with impunity, for when he himself once ventured to say something derogatory of Hamlet, Smith replied, “Yes, but still Hamlet is full of fine passages.”  This opinion of Shakespeare was of course common to most of the great men of last century.  They were not so much insensible to the poet’s genius as perplexed by it.  His plays were full of imagination, dramatic power, natural gifts of every kind—­that was admitted; but then they seemed wild, unregulated, savage—­even “drunken savage,” to use Voltaire’s expression; they were magnificent,