H/IS is perhaps the most illustrious name appearing in these sketches.But he has a higher reputation in political economy than in metaphysics, in which latter department he comes before us as the author of a theory of moral sentiments, and of very interesting fragmentary histories of certain departments of philosophy.{163}
He was born June 5, 1723, in the "lang toun" of Kirkcaldy, which lies on the opposite side of the Frith of Forth from Edinburgh.His father was comptroller of the customs there and his mother, a benignant Christian lady, watched over his sickly childhood with tenderness, which he repaid her by a corresponding kindness for the long period of sixty years, for the greater part of which the two lived together.When about three years old he was stolen by a party of tinkers, who took him to the woods, but was fortunately rescued.We should have liked to hear him, in his later years, speculating as to what might have been his place in the gypsy camp had he been brought up among them.
We can conceive that, while fashioning spoons out of horns and mending tin dishes, his comprehensive head would have been spinning a theory of the organization of the tribe.But it would have been beyond the capacity even of the explorer of the nature and causes of national wealth to determine what he himself or any other might have become if trained in such different circumstances.He seems to have received an excellent education in his native place, at a school which reared a number of eminent men.Unable from his weak bodily constitution to join in active amusements, he gave himself to reading, and, even at that early age, was noted for speaking to himself when alone, and falling into absent fits in company.At the premature age of fourteen, he went to the University of Glasgow, where his favorite studies seem to have been mathematics and natural philosophy.But before he left he attended the lectures of Hutcheson, whom he greatly admired, and who, no doubt, helped to direct him to philosophic pursuits.From Glasgow he went, on a salary provided by the Snell Foundation, to Baliol College, Oxford, where he resided for seven years, and seems to have given himself specially to the studies of polite literature." He employed himself frequently in the practice of translation (particularly from the French), with a view to the improvement of his own style." Every one knows that the French authors were the models to which the greater part of the Scottish writers looked at that time.Hume and Smith entertained a feeling of admiration for French prose and poetry, but had no appreciation (as Adam Ferguson remarked)of Shakespeare or Milton.{164}
His original destination had been to the Church of England, but he did not find the profession to suit him.
