Life of Adam Smith | Page 6

the woman in Leslie wood. As soon as
she saw them she threw her burden down and escaped, and the child
was brought back to his mother. He would have made, I fear, a poor
gipsy. As he grew up in boyhood his health became stronger, and he
was in due time sent to the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy.
The Burgh School of Kirkcaldy was one of the best secondary schools
of Scotland at that period, and its principal master, Mr. David Millar,
had the name of being one of the best schoolmasters of his day. When
Smith first went to school we cannot say, but it seems probable that he
began Latin in 1733, for Eutropius is the class-book of a beginner in
Latin, and the Eutropius which Smith used as a class-book still exists,
and contains his signature with the date of that year.[3] As he left
school in 1737, he thus had at least four years' training in the classics
before he proceeded to the University. Millar, his classical master, had
adventured in literature. He wrote a play, and his pupils used to act it.
Acting plays was in those days a common exercise in the higher
schools of Scotland. The presbyteries often frowned, and tried their
best to stop the practice, but the town councils, which had the
management of these schools, resented the dictation of the presbyteries,
and gave the drama not only the support of their personal presence at
the performances, but sometimes built a special stage and auditorium

for the purpose. Sir James Steuart, the economist, played the king in
Henry the Fourth when he was a boy at the school of North Berwick in
1735. The pupils of Dalkeith School, where the historian Robertson
was educated, played _Julius Cæsar_ in 1734. In the same year the
boys of Perth Grammar School played Cato in the teeth of an explicit
presbyterial anathema, and again in the same year--in the month of
August--the boys of the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy, which Smith was
at the time attending, enacted the piece their master had written. It bore
the rather unromantic and uninviting title of "A Royal Council for
Advice, or the Regular Education of Boys the Foundation of all other
Improvements." The _dramatis personæ_ were first the master and
twelve ordinary members of the council, who sat gravely round a table
like senators, and next a crowd of suitors, standing at a little distance
off, who sent representatives to the table one by one to state their
grievances--first a tradesman, then a farmer, then a country gentleman,
then a schoolmaster, a nobleman, and so on. Each of them received
advice from the council in turn, and then, last of all, a gentleman came
forward, who complimented the council on the successful completion
of their day's labours.[4] Smith would no doubt have been present at
this performance, but whether he played an active part either as
councillor or as spokesman for any class of petitioners, or merely stood
in the crowd of suitors, a silent super, cannot now be guessed.
Among those young actors at this little provincial school were several
besides Smith himself who were to play important and even
distinguished parts afterwards on the great stage of the world. James
Oswald--the Right Hon. James Oswald, Treasurer of the Navy--who is
sometimes said to have been one of Smith's schoolfellows, could not
have been so, as he was eight years Smith's senior, but his younger
brother John, subsequently Bishop of Raphoe, doubtless was; and so
was Robert Adam, the celebrated architect, who built the London
Adelphi, Portland Place, and--probably his finest work--Edinburgh
University. Though James Oswald was not at school with Smith, he
was one of his intimate home friends from the first. The Dunnikier
family lived in the town, and stood on such a footing of intimacy with
the Smiths that, as we have seen, it was "Mr. James of Dunnikier"--the
father of the James Oswald now in question--who undertook on behalf

of Mrs. Smith the arrangements for her husband's funeral; and the
friendship of James Oswald, as will presently appear, was, after the
affection of his mother, the best thing Smith carried into life with him
from Kirkcaldy. The Adam family also lived in the town, though the
father was a leading Scotch architect--King's Mason for Scotland, in
fact--and was proprietor of a fair estate not far away; and the four
brothers Adam were the familiars of Smith's early years. They
continued to be among his familiars to the last. Another of his school
companions who played a creditable part in his time was John Drysdale,
the minister's son, who became one of the ministers of Edinburgh,
doctor of divinity, chaplain to the king, leader of an ecclesiastical
party--of the Moderates in succession to Robertson--twice