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91.: From ‘LE GR[AND] VIC[AIRE] ECCOSSOIS’ - 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.


91.

From ‘LE GR[AND] VIC[AIRE] ECCOSSOIS’1

MS., Buccleuch Collection (acc. to Scott); Scott 109–10.

[? Toulouse,] 18 Feb. 1766

Et toi, Adam Smith, Philosophe de Glascow, héros et idole des highbroad2 Ladys, que fais–tu, mon cher ami? Comment gouvernes–tu La Duchesse d’Anville3 et Mad. de Bouflers,4 ou ton coeur est–il toujours épris des charmes de Mad. Nicol5 et des appas tant apparens que cachés de cetter autre dame de fife6 que vous aimiéz tant? Ne puis–je recevoir de vos nouvelles, milord?7 Si vous ne vouléz pas écrire vous–même, parce que vous êtes paresseux ou parce que vous griffonéz comme un chat ou, ce qui est pire, comme un duc, si Adam Smith ne veut pas m’écrire par les mêmes raisons, si l’honorable M. Scot8 garde aussi le silence, dites au moins à quelcun de votre maison de me mander quelque chose de votre part; je suis chargé de savoir si vois devéz rester à Paris cet hyver ou si vous alléz courir le monde, j’ai promis de m’en informer. Si les ecrivains vous manquent, vous avèz mon ami et Cousin, Duncan le Piper,9 qui me mandera en Erse tout ce que vous voudréz me faire savoir, et m’enverra un morceau digne de fingal, d’oscian ou de Mac Ullin.10

Le Gr[and] Vic[aire] Eccossois, fait en congregation

[1 ]The writer was a Scotsman, resident in France, who assumed here the character of a churchman suggested by the profession of his companion, a Capuchin monk, during a journey from Paris to Toulouse (Scott 109).

[2 ]? Anticipation of ‘high–brow’.

[3 ]Marie–Louise–Nicole Elizabeth, duchesse d’Anville (1716–94), grand–daughter of the La Rochefoucauld of the Maxims and faithful friend of Turgot. With her son, the young duc de La Rochefoucauld, she met Smith at Geneva, late in 1765.

[4 ]Marie–Charlotte–Hippolyte de Campet de Saujeon (1725–1800), md. Edouard, marquis de Boufflers–Rouverel, Feb. 1746, then became the mistress of the prince de Conti and acted as his hostess at salons held in the Temple and at his country house, L’Isle Adam. One of the foremost anglophiles in France, she opened a correspondence with Hume in 1761 and may have used her influence to have him brought to Paris in 1763. During his two years there, she became his close friend, and for his sake welcomed Smith to her salon early in 1766. She contemplated translating TMS (Rae 198–9).

[5 ]? English lady with whom Smith is supposed to have fallen in love while on a jaunt to Abbeville from Paris (Rae 213).

[6 ]Dugald Stewart recorded that he met a Fife lady past eighty to whom Smith was attached for several years early in life (Rae, ibid.; Scott 65).

[7 ]The writer addresses the Duke of Buccleuch at this point.

[8 ]Hon. Hew Campbell Scott.

[9 ]Possibly the ‘piper of the Argyleshire Militia’ whom David Hume mentioned to Lord Hailes as having ‘repeated to [Smith] all those poems which Mr Macpherson has translated, and many more of equal beauty’ (HL i. 329).

[10 ]James Macpherson’s publications: Fingal (1762), Temora (1763), and The Works of Ossian (1765), with its introductory critical dissertation by Dr. Hugh Blair, pleased all of Europe and set society talking about Gaelic heroes and epic poetry.