than keep a book of transactions, or lay aside the letters you receive, with copy inclosed. The extract front Kames is laid aside, to make way for extracts from Pennant, which are more popular. Explain to ——, who is by this time in town, the ridiculousness of his behaviour. It would seem that his servants are perfect idiots, and that he trusts to them. If I were in his place, and a ser-
vant once neglected to do what I had ordered him, he should never receive from me a second order.
"I beg that Creech and you may have some communing about the fate of the magazine; as I am no longer to have any concern with it. I do not mean to write anything for it, after the present volume is finished; and I fancy the next is the last number of the third volume. I have another view of disposing of my time, and I fancy it will almost wholly be taken up; the sooner, therefore, that I am informed of your resolutions, the better."[1]
Poor Mr Smellie seems to have laboured with patient, but ineffectual perseverance, to check the ardour of his restless colleague. An attack by Stuart on the Elements of Criticism by lord Kames, he managed, by the transmutation of a few words, adroitly to convert into a panegyric. "On the day of publication," says the memorialist of Smellie, "Dr Stuart came to inquire at the printing office, 'if the —— was damned;'" using a gross term which he usually indulged in. when he was censuring an author. Mr Smellie told him what he had done, and put a copy of the altered review into his hands. After reading the tuo or three introductory sentences, he fell down on the floor, apparently in a fit: but, on coming to himself again, he good naturedly said, "William, after all, I believe you have done right."[2] Smellie was not, however, so fortunate on other occasions. The ccentricities of the classical Burnet of Monboddo, afforded an opportunity which Stuart did not wish to omit. He proposed to adorn the first number of the Magazine with "a print of my lord Monboddo, in his quadruped form. I must, therefore," he continues, "most earnestly beg that you will purchase for me a copy of it in some of the macaroni-print shops. It is not to be procured at Edinburgh. They are afraid to vend it here. We are to take it on the footing of a figure of an animal, not yet described; and are to give a grave, yet satirical account of it, in the manner of Buffon. It would not be proper to allude to his lordship, but in a very distant manner."[3] Although this laborious joke was not attempted, Stuart's criticism on the Origin and Progress of Language, notwithstanding the mollifications of Smellie, had a sensible effect on the sale of the magazine. "I am sorry," says Mr Murray, in a letter to Smellie, "for the defeat you have met with. Had you praised lord Monboddo, instead of damning him, it would not have happened." It is to be feared the influence against the periodical was produced, not so much by its having unduly attacked the work of a philosopher, as from its having censured a lord of session.
During his labours for this magazine, Stuart did not neglect his pleasures. He is said one night to have called at the house of his friend Smellie, in a state of such complete jollity, that it was necessary he should be put to bed. Awakening, and mistaking the description of place in which he was lodged, he brought his friend in his night-gown to his bed-side, by his repeated cries of "house! house!" and, in a tone of sympathy, said to him, "Smellie! I never expected to see you in such a house. Get on your clothes, and return immediately to your wife and family: and be assured I shall never mention this affair to any one." The biographer of Smellie, who has recorded the above, gives the following similar anecdote of Stuart and his friends. "On another ramble of
