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64.: From HON. THOMAS FITZMAURICE - 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.


64.

From HON. THOMAS FITZMAURICE

MS., GUL Gen. 1035/145; unpubl.

St. Mary Hall, Oxford, Friday 26 Feb. 1762

My Dear Smith

I have this instant receiv’d your Letter of the 19th Inst.1 nor do I delay to give you any satisfaction that lies in my power. The Letter which you wrote to my Brother I saw and think that had it been for an Affair of £10,000 instead of £200 it could not have been more accurately drawn up, so anxious were you to clear yourself of what you imagin’d my Lady Shelburne2 thought was in you unfair dealing, which you were just as clear of before you took that trouble as anything could possibly make you, even in her Eyes. I give you my Word that the Account itself was found and I made that appear to my Mother to be perfectly exact and right which she once, Indeed I can assure you ’twas but for a very short time, by my giddiness thought was somewhat otherwise. The reason that I did not write to you sooner concerning this matter, was, because my Brother said he would write himself, which, tho’ he has not done I am not very much surpris’d upon account of his Politics which have of late been rather intricate, which by this time I dare say you must have heard of.3 During this last vacation of Dr Blackstones4 I spent five weeks in London. The two first I spent with My Lady Shelburne in Hanover Square, the 3 last with my Brother in a New House which he has taken in Hill Street late belonging to Lord Weymouth5 a very good one.

My Brother told me that he had had a letter from you to me inclos’d to him but that he had put it up with some other papers and could not get at it which was in shorter words that he had lost it, so that for the future as your Letters will always be very agreable to me and as they come but Seldom, I should be glad if, whether you have a Frank or no, you would send them to me directly to Oxford and the oft’ner they come, I need not assure you that they will be the more acceptable.

My Mother has desir’d me to ask you concerning the Epitaph which I told her you promis’d to take into Consideration but that you were not certain whether you could do it or no. I inclose to you a Letter from the Bishop of Killala6 to me concerning Godfrey7 which I shall tell him I leave entirely to you as being the most proper person in the World to get information from, should be glad if you would take the trouble to answer. I hope Mr Godfrey is going on well pray my Compliments to him. Your young People are in general rather brighter than they were in my time I’m told at present.

I attend Chapple very regularly and Dr. Blackstone more so whose Lectures during the next Summer I hope to make myself more Master of than I am at present.

I am oblig’d to you for delivering My Message to Prof. Wilson8 but have not as yet receiv’d the Thermometers.

Drs King and Smith and Riall9 are all well. They desire their Compliments to you.

The Expence of this place is prodigious. Tradesmen certainly make at least cent. per cent. of their Money here. I have often heard you say that Coals were very expensive here, it is very extraordinary that they have they have cost me since I came upwards of £12.

There is as much good Company here just now as have been for this many years.—Lord Pembrokes10 Affair with Miss Hunter makes a prodigious noise just now and indeed very Justly ’tis the oddest thing I ever heard of; They have [taken] his Regiment and his Bed–Chambership from him. They say he can never return to England again. The story is, if You should not have heard it, that he has run away with Miss. Hunter a young Lady of equal Beauty and Fashion. They say they are gone to Bremen in Germany. He did it with premeditation too. You know he is remarkable for having a very Handsome Wife a Daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, whom he never us’d well.

Pray have you seen Dr Louths English Grammar11 which is just come out? It is talk’d of much. Some of the ingenious men with whom this University overflows, are picking faults and finding Errors in it at present. Pray what do you think of it? I am going to read Harris’s Hermes12 now, having read this Grammar. I heard lately an objection to an Expression in your Book, which I think has some foundation. It is in the Beginning of the 1st Section upon Custom: the Expression is a Haunch Button, which is not, I imagine exactly English.13

I saw your Friend Michael Ramsay14 in London as also young Alexander the Merchant15 just come from France, both of whom wer going to Scotland with one of Whom I intended to have sent a parcel containing Dr Blacks [? scale] of Faranheits Thermometer and a Book of Robin Foulis’s both of which were pack’d up without my knowledge. Pray make my Compliments to both these Gentlemen as likewise to all my other good Friends of the College. Pray how does Mrs Smith and Miss. Douglas do do not forget me, by any means to them and Believe me to be

With very great Sincerity your very Affectionate

Thomas Fitzmaurice

P.S. I need not tell you that I shall be glad to hear from you as soon as may be Convenient, tho’ to you I think I may say rather sooner than that. Do not forget [me] to Doctor Simson my old Friend. Dr Johnston is, I hear, at last dead.16

[1 ]Not traced.

[2 ]Writer’s mother, widow of 1st Earl of Shelburne.

[3 ]The 2nd Earl of Shelburne at this time was acting as a link between Henry Fox and Lord Bute who became First Lord of the Treasury on 29 May. The issue dividing the cabinet was that of making peace with France.

[4 ]Fitzmaurice was attending the Oxford law lectures of William Blackstone; see Letter No. 27, n. 5.

[5 ]Thomas Thynne (1734–96), 3rd Viscount and 1st Marquis of Bath (created 1789), ‘a man of dissipated and extravagant tastes’ (The Complete Peerage, ed. Hon. Vicary Gibbs); made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1764, but never set foot there though he drew the attached salary and allowances.

[6 ]Nicholas Synge (d. 1771), 2nd s. of the Archbishop of Tuam; advanced to see of Killaloe, 1746.

[7 ]? Luke Godfrey, M.A. 1763, D.D. 1795; later Rector of Middleton, County Cork.

[8 ]Alexander Wilson.

[9 ]Friends of Adam Smith from his time at Oxford: on John Smith, see Letter 15, n. 4, also Scott 39; James King, D.D. 1740; ? relative of Samuel Riall, matriculated at Glasgow in 1756, entered St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, 1761.

[10 ]Henry Herbert (1734–94), Earl of Pembroke; after his affair with Catherine (Kitty) Hunter, dau. of a Lord of Admiralty, he had ‘amorous connexions’ with several ladies of less note (The Complete Peerage).

[11 ]Robert Lowth or Louth (1710–87), D.D. 1753; Bishop of London 1777; Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1741–50; published lectures on Hebrew poetry (1753), A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), and a new translation of Isaiah (1778).

[12 ]James Harris (1709–80), M.P. 1761–80; Lord of Treasury 1763–5; published Hermes: or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar (1751).

[13 ]TMS ed. 1, 1759, p. 292 (V.1): ‘we find a meanness or awkwardness in the absence even of a haunch button.’ The word was kept up to and including ed. 6, 1790, and seems to be good enough English (see OED).

[14 ]Michael Ramsay of Mungale, inclined at first to take orders in the Church of England but accepted posts as travelling tutor to families of Earls of Home and Eglintoun; later Chamberlain to the Duke of Roxburgh; early intimate friend of David Hume and Lord Kames.

[15 ]? John Alexander, 3rd son of William Alexander (d. 1761); see Letter 61 from Ferguson, dated 5 Nov. 1761.

[16 ]Dr John Johnstoun, died 26 Jan. 1762, Professor of Medicine at Glasgow; showed an aversion to teaching and was suspended in 1718: he allowed Dr William Cullen to teach c. 1746.