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122.: From JAMES BOSWELL - 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.


122.

From JAMES BOSWELL1

  • Address: To Adam Smith Esqr at Kirkaldie

MS., Yale University Libr. L1161 (copy in hand of John Johnston of Grange); unpubl. (to appear in Yale Boswell Correspondence).

Dear Sir

As I know your benevolence; I readily take the liberty to Solicite you in behalf of the Widow of Mr. Francis Scot of Johnston, who was a very worthy man, and a Descendant of the Family of Buccleugh.

The Good old woman has a Small possession under the Duke, Called Knollyholm in the parish of Cannobie, where She is anxious to end her days, She is under Some fears of its being taken from her, I would therefore beg that you may take the trouble to mention this Case to the Duke and prevent an inhuman thing from being done; I am always with much regard

Dear Sir, Your obliged humble Servt.

(Signed) James Boswell

[1 ]James Boswell (1740–95) lawyer, journalist, and biographer; educ. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leyden, and on the Grand Tour 1764–6. Smith was his teacher at Glasgow and praised him, according to Boswell, for his ‘happy facility of manners’. He passed advocate in 1766, but his first love was writing: Account of Corsica (1768); Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), giving an account of his 1773 tour with Johnson; and The Life of Johnson (1791). The discovery and publication in recent years of the journals found at Malahide Castle and Fettercairn have brought him renewed fame.

[2 ]Boswell wrote letters from the evening of 27 Aug. until 5 a.m. the next morning, then set out for London at 8 o’clock.