246 ON LORD KAIMS. 0£l. 26, 



eat of it heartily, and was as tame as any barn-yard 

 foul about the houfe. In a year or two afterwards, 

 this grateful bird difcontinued his vifits for ever,.fo 

 that they concluded he muft be dead, but whether of 

 old age, or from accidental caufes could never be af- 

 certained. I did not learn that they difcoveyed any 

 fyroptoms of decrepitude or decline in this animal, 

 feemiugly the effefts of age. J. A. 



Sir, 



Hints refpcBitig Lord Kaims. 

 fTo the Editor of the Bee. 



J. AM happy to learn that a gentleman of whofe abili- 

 ties and fidelity I entertain a high opinion *, is about to 

 offer to the public a Uterary life of Lord Kaims upon 

 the plan I fuggefled in one of my hints to the learned, 

 inferted in your refpedable paper f. 



It is very far from my intention to interfere with 

 the undertaking of an author, fo much better qualified 

 in every refpedl, than I am to give the annals of the 

 philofopher, but only to obviate by the communication 

 of a letter of Kaims's, the infnmation that has fre- 

 quently been made in literary circles, that he was not 

 the real author of the elements of criticifm. That he 

 had obtained the paperscontaining them from an obfcure 

 but ingenious and learned acquaintance, and had brought 

 them in to popular form, and fold them to Andrew 

 IVlillar without acknowledging, or properly rewarding 

 the man who had the honour of the compofition. 



My dear Friend, Edinburgh, l6th June 1 764. 



In the elegance of converfation, and gaiety of amufe- 



ment, are not you a felonious creature to take the ad- 



* Mr Smellie of Edinburgh. 

 + The ino^enious writer of this elTay does not feem to know, that the 

 iife of Lord Kaims, to which he here alludes, is already publilhed in 

 the EDcyclopttdia Britannica. Edit, 



r 



