Of Goldsmith Smith spoke somewhat severely—­of Goldsmith as a man apparently, not as a writer—­relating some anecdotes of his easy morals, which Amicus does not repeat.  But when Amicus mentioned some story about Burke seducing a young lady, Smith at once declared it an invention.  “I imagine,” said he, “that you have got that fine story out of some of the Magazines.  If anything can be lower than the Reviews, they are so.  They once had the impudence to publish a story of a gentleman having debauched his own sister, and on inquiry it came out that the gentleman never had a sister.  As to Mr. Burke, he is a worthy, honest man, who married an accomplished girl without a shilling of fortune.”  Of the Reviews Smith never spoke but with ridicule and detestation.  Amicus tried to get the Gentleman’s Magazine exempted from the general condemnation, but Smith would not hear of that, and said that for his part he never looked at a Review, nor even at the names of the publishers.

Pope was a great favourite with him as a poet, and he knew by heart many passages from his poems, though he disliked Pope’s personal character as a man, saying he was all affectation, and speaking of his letter to Arbuthnot when the latter was dying as a consummate piece of canting.  Dryden was another of his favourite poets, and when he was speaking one day in high praise of Dryden’s fables, Amicus mentioned Hume’s objections, and was told, “You will learn more as to poetry by reading one good poem than by a thousand volumes of criticism.”  Smith regarded the French theatre as the standard of dramatic excellence.

Amicus concludes his reminiscences by quoting one of Smith’s observations on a political subject.  He said that at the beginning of the reign of George the Third the dissenting ministers used to receive L2000 a year from Government, but that the Earl of Bute had most improperly deprived them of this allowance, and that he supposed this to be the real motive of their virulent opposition to Government.

These recollections of Amicus provoked a letter in a succeeding number of the Bee from Ascanius (the Earl of Buchan) complaining of their publication, not as in any way misrepresenting any of Smith’s views, but as obtruding the trifles of the ordinary social hour upon the learned world in a way Smith himself would have extremely disliked.  Smith, he says, would rather have had his body injected by Hunter and Monro, and exhibited in Fleet Street or in Weir’s Museum.  That may very possibly be so; but though Smith, if he were to give his views on literary topics to the public, might prefer putting them in more elaborate dress, yet the opinions he expressed were, it must be remembered, mature opinions on subjects on which he had long thought and even lectured, and if neither Dr. Anderson nor the Earl of Buchan has any fault to find with the correctness of Amicus’s report of them, Smith cannot be considered to be any way wronged.  The Earl complains too of the matter of the letter being “such frivolous matter”; but it is not so frivolous, and, if it were, is it not Smith himself who used to say to his class at Glasgow, as we are informed by Boswell, that there was nothing too frivolous to be learnt about a great man, and that, for his own part, he was always glad to know that Milton wore latchets to his shoes and not buckles?