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34.: From WILLIAM ROBERTSON - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith [1740]

Edition used:

Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, vol. VI of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


34.

From WILLIAM ROBERTSON

  • Address: To Mr Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Glasgow

MS., GUL Gen. 1035/139; Scott 238–9.

My Dear Sir

Our friend John Home arrived here from London two days ago. Tho’ I dare say you have heard of the good reception of the Theory from [m]any different people, I must acquaint you with the intelligence Home brings. He assures me that it is in the hands of all persons of the best fashion; that it meets with great approbation both on account of the matter and stile; and that it is impossible for any book on so serious a subject to be received in a more gracious manner. It comforts the English a good deal to hear that you were bred at Oxford, they claim some part of you on that account. Home joins with me in insisting that your next work shall be on some subject less abstruse. I still wish you would think on the History of Philosophy.1 I write this in great haste, as Johnstone2 is waiting me that we may go to walk. When shall we see you in town. I ever am

Yours most faithfully

William Robertson

[1 ]In the 1750s, Smith read to the Literary Club of Glasgow papers on ‘Taste, Composition and the History of Philosophy’ which he had previously delivered while a lecturer on rhetoric in Edinburgh (R. Duncan, Notes and Documents Illustrative of the Literary History of Glasgow (Maitland Club, Glasgow, 1831, 16). See EPS for ‘The History of Ancient Logics and Metaphysics’, ‘The History of Astronomy’, and ‘The History of the Ancient Physics’, the extant parts of the work Robertson desired.

[2 ]William Johnstone.