ADAM SMITH. 181 



and nothing in which he less excelled ; but it seemed 

 like the free and spontaneous tribute to genius and 

 learning which courtly servility had paid to one monarch 

 by assuming his wry neck, and to another by adopting 

 his false grammar,* so that he may perhaps be allowed 

 to have more than any other celebrated teacher of our 

 own times, attained the observance with which the 

 ancient sects cultivated their masters, while his friend 

 and coadjutor, De Quesnay, in this respect passed all 

 who never actually taught. 



The late eminent Professor Millar, who had been a 

 pupil of Dr. Smith's, and who remained to his death 

 one of his most intimate friends, has given a valuable 

 account of his lectures which Mr. Stewart inserted in 

 his * Biographical Sketch.' When he taught the Logic 

 Class, he appears to have rather converted the course 

 into one upon rhetoric and belles lettres, only giving 

 an introductory view of the School Logic and Meta- 

 physics. The reason given for what appears to me a 

 great departure from the proper duties of that chair, 

 is, that he considered the best illustration of the mental 

 powers to consist in examining the several ways of 

 communicating our thoughts by speech, and tracing 

 the principles upon which literary composition becomes 

 most subservient to persuasion or entertainment. It 

 really seems difficult to imagine a more unsatisfactory 

 reason for teaching rhetoric as logic. The difference 

 of the two studies was much more accurately perceived 

 by another great light, Lord Coke, who places them 

 rather in contrast than in resemblance to each other, 

 when he quaintly compares the original writ to logic, 

 and the count or pleading to rhetoric, which assuredly 

 it only resembles in being as unlike logic, as the plea 

 is unlike the writ. But I apprehend, that whatever 

 might be given as a ratio justified, the ratio suasoria was 



* Augustus and Louis XIV. Happily the Roman parasites could not, 

 like the Parisians, bequeath their monarch's deformity, but mon carosse is 

 still French. 



