[80] Burton’s Life of Hume, i. 417.

[81] Carlyle’s Autobiography, p. 275.

[82] Burton’s Scot Abroad, ii. 340.

[83] Minutes of Select Society, Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh.

[84] Ibid.

[85] Scots Magazine, xix. 163.

[86] Burton’s Scot Abroad, ii. 343.

[87] Scots Magazine for year 1755, p. 126.

[88] Lord Campbell’s Lives of the Chancellors, vi. 32.

[89] Scots Magazine, xxvi. 229.

[90] The Bee for June 1791.

[91] Tytler’s Life of Lord Kames, i. 233.

[92] Life of John Home, p. 24.

[93] Burton’s Scot Abroad, ii. 343.

[94] Douglas’s Select Works, p. 23.

[95] The Bee for 1791.

[96] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 16.

[97] Professor of Logic.

[98] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 45.

[99] Fraser’s The Lennox, p. xliv.

[100] Carlyle Correspondence, Edinburgh University Library.

[101] Wealth of Nations, Book V. chap. i.

[102] “Memoirs of Black,” Transactions, R.S.E., v. 113.

[103] Carlyle Correspondence, Edinburgh University.

[104] Small, Sketch of A. Ferguson, p. 23.

[105] Kames, Sketches of Man, Book II. chap. ix.

[106] Campbell’s Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vi. 28.

CHAPTER IX

THE “THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS”

1759. Aet. 36

Smith enjoyed a very high Scotch reputation long before his name was known to the great public by any contribution to literature.  But in 1759 he gave his Theory of Moral Sentiments to the press, and took his place, by almost immediate and universal recognition, in the first rank of contemporary writers.  The book is an essay supporting and illustrating the doctrine that moral approbation and disapprobation are in the last analysis expressions of sympathy with the feelings of an imaginary and impartial spectator, and its substance had already been given from year to year in his ordinary lectures to his students, though after the publication he thought it no longer necessary to dwell at the same length on this branch of his course, giving more time, no doubt, to jurisprudence and political economy.  The book was published in London by Andrew Millar in two vols. 8vo.  It was from the first well received, its ingenuity, eloquence, and great copiousness of effective illustration being universally acknowledged and admired.  Smith sent a copy to Hume in London, and received the following reply, which contains some interesting particulars of the reception of the book there:—­

     LONDON, 12th April 1759.