Home

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.

Copyright information:

The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith and the associated volumes are published in hardcover by Oxford University Press. The six titles of the Glasgow Edition, but not the associated volumes, are being published in softcover by Liberty Fund. The online edition is published by Liberty Fund under license from Oxford University Press.

©Oxford University Press 1976. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be stored transmitted retransmitted lent or reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of Oxford University Press.

Fair use statement:

This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit.

254.

To FRASER TYTLER1

Address: Mr Fraser Tytler, George Square

MS., NLS Acc. 3639, fol. 19; RSE Transactions viii (1818), 538,

[Edinburgh,] 4 Feb. 1786

Dear Sir

I have read over your Paper2 with the greatest pleasure. The composition is, what it ought to be, simple, elegant and perfectly perspicuous, and will be a very great ornament to our memoirs. Some of my Chymical friends, however, are of opinion that the degree of Vitrification, which takes place in the specimens of those forts, is too great to be the effect of any accidental fire such as you suppose, and could be produced only by a great accumulation of wood heaped upon the wall after it was built. This is a subject of which I am totally ignorant. You had convinced me who fancied that this imperfect vitrification was more likely to be the effect of accident than of knowledge. The friends I mean are Dr Black and Dr Hutton,3 who, in every other respect, entertain the same high opinion of your composition that [I]4 do. You had better c[onsult] with them, or they may convince you; and even tho neither of these two events should happen, the offense, I apprehend, will not be great either to them or to you. I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect and esteem, Dear Sir

Your most humble Servant

Adam Smith

[1 ]Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813), lawyer and historian; educ. Edinburgh; advocate 1770; protégé of Lord Kames, whose Dictionary of Decisions he continued (1778, 1797); Professor of Universal History at Edinburgh 1780—published his lectures, Elements of General History (1801); Judge–Advocate for North Britain 1790; Court of Session Judge, as Lord Woodhouselee 1802, and Lord Commissioner of Justiciary 1811; notable works: Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791) and Memoirs of . . . Henry Home of Kames (1807, 1814).

[2 ]Read to RSE in 1789: Transactions viii (1818) 537; Smith was one of the presidents of the RSE literary class. Tytler was one of the secretaries of RSE by 1788 (Rae 377).

[3 ]Dr. Joseph Black, Smith’s co–executor with Dr. James Hutton (1726–97), geologist, educ. Edinburgh, Paris, and Leyden (M.D. 1749). Hutton’s Theory of the Earth (1795) established uniformitarianism in geology, and the modern theory of the formation of the earth’s crust.

[4 ]MS. damaged.

Home

The Forum

Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

The Library

Return to Title Page for Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith

The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

254.: To FRASER TYTLER - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith [1740]

Edition used: