in the classics before he proceeded to the University.  Millar, his classical master, had adventured in literature.  He wrote a play, and his pupils used to act it.  Acting plays was in those days a common exercise in the higher schools of Scotland.  The presbyteries often frowned, and tried their best to stop the practice, but the town councils, which had the management of these schools, resented the dictation of the presbyteries, and gave the drama not only the support of their personal presence at the performances, but sometimes built a special stage and auditorium for the purpose.  Sir James Steuart, the economist, played the king in Henry the Fourth when he was a boy at the school of North Berwick in 1735.  The pupils of Dalkeith School, where the historian Robertson was educated, played Julius Caesar in 1734.  In the same year the boys of Perth Grammar School played Cato in the teeth of an explicit presbyterial anathema, and again in the same year—­in the month of August—­the boys of the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy, which Smith was at the time attending, enacted the piece their master had written.  It bore the rather unromantic and uninviting title of “A Royal Council for Advice, or the Regular Education of Boys the Foundation of all other Improvements.”  The dramatis personae were first the master and twelve ordinary members of the council, who sat gravely round a table like senators, and next a crowd of suitors, standing at a little distance off, who sent representatives to the table one by one to state their grievances—­first a tradesman, then a farmer, then a country gentleman, then a schoolmaster, a nobleman, and so on.  Each of them received advice from the council in turn, and then, last of all, a gentleman came forward, who complimented the council on the successful completion of their day’s labours.[4] Smith would no doubt have been present at this performance, but whether he played an active part either as councillor or as spokesman for any class of petitioners, or merely stood in the crowd of suitors, a silent super, cannot now be guessed.

Among those young actors at this little provincial school were several besides Smith himself who were to play important and even distinguished parts afterwards on the great stage of the world.  James Oswald—­the Right Hon. James Oswald, Treasurer of the Navy—­who is sometimes said to have been one of Smith’s schoolfellows, could not have been so, as he was eight years Smith’s senior, but his younger brother John, subsequently Bishop of Raphoe, doubtless was; and so was Robert Adam, the celebrated architect, who built the London Adelphi, Portland Place, and—­probably his finest work—­Edinburgh University.  Though James Oswald was not at school with Smith, he was one of his intimate home friends from the first.  The Dunnikier family lived in the town, and stood on such a footing of intimacy with the Smiths that, as we have seen, it was “Mr. James of Dunnikier”—­the