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187.: From EDWARD GIBBON - 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.


187.

From EDWARD GIBBON

MS., Honeyman Coll., Lehigh University Libr., Bethlehem, Penn.; Review of English Studies,n.s. x (1950), 401–2; Letters of Gibbon, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), ii. 166 (in part).

Almacks [Club, London,] 26 Nov. 1777

Dear Sir

Among the strange reports, which are every day circulated in this wide town, I heard one to–day so very extraordinary, that I know not how to give credit to it. I was informed that a place of Commissioner of the Customs in Scotland had been given to a Philosopher who for his own glory and for the benefit of mankind had enlightened the world by the most profound and systematic treatise on the great objects of trade and revenue which had ever been published in any age or in any Country. But as I was told at the same time that this Philosopher was my particular friend, I found myself very forcible inclined to believe, what I most sincerely wished and desired.

After a very pleasant summer passed in Paris where I often heard your name, and saw several of your friends particularly the Dutchess Danville, and the Countess de Bouflers, I returned to England about the beginning of this Month. If I was guilty of any intemperance I have been punished by a very severe fit of the Gout, from which I am now recovering to mix again in the more tumultuous but perhaps less pleasing Society of London. If your new dignity should [not] allow you to make us a regular visit every spring or summer I am afraid I shall be selfish enough to murmur at your promotion. In case you should be at Edinburgh, I must trouble you with my Compliments to Dr Robertson: in a post or two I hope to satisfy him by what a strange concurrence of accidents I have appeared so very careless. Beauclerc,1 who is playing at Whisk, desires me to assure you that he is warmly interested in whatever may be agreable or avantageous to you.

I am Dear Sir with the highest regard most sincerely yours

E. Gibbon.

[1 ]Topham Beauclerk (1739–80), fellow member, together with Gibbon and Smith, of Dr. Johnson’s Club. He owned a library of 30,000 volumes, especially rich in English literature and history, also travels and science.