The short–lived Edinburgh Review of 1755–56 was launched and edited by Adam Smith’s friend Alexander Wedderburn, later Lord Chancellor and Earl of Rosslyn, with the aim of reviewing every six months the Scottish publications of the previous half–year and, in an appendix, the most notable English and other books. Its motive was the prevailing Scottish thirst for ‘self–
improvement’ and it expressed the curious mixture of national pride and a sense of inferiority (especially in the matter of language) so characteristic of eighteenth–century Scotland. Smith’s choice of Johnson’s Dictionary to review in the first number can thus be seen to be part of a programme, and his final sentences echo a passage which he himself probably contributed to the preface to that number (p. iii):
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Two considerable obstacles have long obstructed the progress of science. One is, the difficulty of a proper expression in a country where there is either no standard of language, or at least one very remote: Some late instances, however, have discovered that this difficulty is not unsurmountable; and that a serious endeavour to conquer it, may acquire, to one born on the north side of the Tweed, a correct and even an elegant stile.
(The second obstacle had been the slow advance of printing in Scotland, now entirely remedied.) It is to this whole context that Smith’s lectures on style and composition, i.e. ‘rhetoric and belles lettres’, in the University of Glasgow from 1751 to 1763 belong. The relevance to the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ of Smith’s effort, in the Letter he inserted in No. 2, to widen the Review’s horizon 1
to take in the literature and learning of Europe, is obvious. His notice of the Dictionary further illustrates a concern with ‘those Principles in the Human Mind which Mr. Smith has pointed out to be the universal motives of Philosophical Researches’, to quote the note at the end of the essay on the History of Astronomy; and it exhibits a semantic preoccupation similar to that of the opening of that essay.
The Edinburgh Review No. 1 (for 1 Jan. to 1 July 1755) appeared on 26 August 1755; No. 2 (for July 1755 to Jan. 1756) in March 1756. The early demise of the journal has been variously explained: most plausibly by A. F. Tytler ( Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Henry Home of Kames, Edinburgh, 1807, i.233) as due to a violent outcry from narrow churchmen over the theological views contained in notices of religious works. Certainly the reviews provoked a lively interest. Many extracts were printed and discussed in the monthly Scots Magazine, and in 1756
several polemical pamphlets appeared, such as A View of the Edinburgh Review pointing out the Spirit and Tendency of that Paper and a burlesque on this called A New Groat’s Worth of Wit for a Penny: or An Analysis or Compend of the Edinburgh Review. The interest was abiding, and in 1818 Sir James Mackintosh brought out in London a second edition of both numbers, identifying the contributors (originally anonymous) and giving an account of the publication.
The authorship of Adam Smith’s contributions was widely known long before Dugald Stewart mentioned them in his ‘Life’ (I.24). They had not escaped criticism: the New Groat’s Worth (p. 5) says the specimen given of Johnson’s Dictionary ‘is dark and almost unintelligible’. Both articles were included in the 1811 edition of the Works (vol. v) with a note that they have often lately been referred to. The review of the Dictionary was reprinted in The Scots Magazine for November 1755 (xvii.539–44), and in The European Magazine and London Review for April 1802 (xli.249–
54) with a remark that a great many readers who have sought without success the very scarce original edition will be gratified ‘to see the opinion of so great a man on a subject he had so well considered, and was so perfect a master of’. This review was indeed influential. In the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797; viii.710) Smith’s remarks on humour (§§ 5–13) constitute, with the addition of a sentence quoting the Duke of Buckingham’s exaltation of humour over wit, the entire entry on HUMOUR—with no mention of the author. The entry remained in the fourth (1810), fifth (1817), and sixth (1823) editions of the Encyclopaedia, and was replaced only in the seventh (1842). Smith’s association of wit with civility as opposed to buffoonish humour may have coloured the historical account of the matter given by his pupil John Millar (later Professor of Law at Glasgow) in An historical view of the English Government from the settlement of the Saxons in Britain to the Revolution in 1688 (1803; iv.352–60). A refined and correct state of taste and literature are, according to this sociological theory, inimical to the http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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cultivation of humour but ‘peculiarly calculated to promote the circulation and improvement of wit’ (358). Behind both Smith and Millar lie the distinctions made by Corbyn Morris in An Essay towards fixing the true Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire and Ridicule (1744).
A curious piece of evidence of the impact made by the review of the Dictionary occurs in a savage attack on Johnson entitled Deformities of Dr Samuel Johnson, selected from his Works 2
(Edinburgh, 1782: two editions), anonymous but the work of James Thomson Callender, a journalist noted for later scurrilities in America. A footnote to a quotation (48) from the Letter to Chesterfield in which Johnson speaks of being ‘bewildered, and in the mazes of such intricacy . . .
frequently entangled’ reads: ‘Perhaps he means, in defining Thunder, Plum–porridge, the particle But, etc. ’ Without Smith the dictionary entry on but would scarcely have been singled out.
From Smith’s second contribution, the ‘Letter’, the Scots Magazine for March 1756 (xviii.125–7) reprinted extracts representing ‘what we shall call his literary character of the several nations’: §§
3–5, 9, 10, 17. Pierre Prevost included in his French translation of the Essays on Philosophical Subjects—Essais philosophiques, (1797), ii.273 ff.—a translation of the entire Letter, a copy of which Dugald Stewart had sent him for this purpose in November 1796. Clearly Prevost was impressed by the breadth and confidence of the Pisgah–view it provided over the continental intellectual scene at mid–century and (as well he might be) by the up–to–dateness of Smith’s familiarity with that scene.
The texts are from the first edition: review of Johnson’s Dictionary (Article III in the Appendix), No. 1 (1755), 61–73; Letter, No. 2 (1756), 63–79, Wedderburn’s introductory note on p.62. The various reprints normalize such spellings as synonomous, petulence, predominent, consistant, crystaline. In view of Adam Smith’s intense interest in the practice of translation, particularly from French (Stewart, I.9), the extracts from Rousseau translated in the Letter are here appended in the original for comparison. Smith will be seen frequently to sacrifice close fidelity to fluency and vigour. He is not impeccable: ‘society’ ( commerce), ‘thus’ ( d’un autre côté),
‘situation’ ( sort), ‘more surely’ ( en sûreté), ‘concurrence’ ( concurrence), ‘we have at last found out’ ( on trouve enfin), are at least misleading.
REVIEW OF JOHNSON’S DICTIONARY
A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson, A. M. Knapton 2 Vols. Folio, £4, 15 s.
The present undertaking is very extensive. A dictionary of the English language, however useful, 1
or rather necessary, has never been hitherto attempted with the least degree of success. To explain hard words and terms of art seems to have been the chief purpose of all the former compositions which have borne the title of English dictionaries. Mr. Johnson has extended his views much farther, and has made a very full collection of all the different meanings of each English word, justified by examples from authors of good reputation. When we compare this book with other dictionaries, the merit of its author appears very extraordinary. Those which in modern languages have gained the most esteem, are that of the French academy, and that of the 1
academy Della Crusca. Both these were composed by a numerous society of learned men, and took up a longer time in the composition, than the life of a single person could well have afforded.
The dictionary of the English language is the work of a single person, and composed in a period of time very inconsiderable, when compared with the extent of the work. The collection of words http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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appears to be very accurate, and must be allowed to be very ample. Most words, we believe, are to be found in the dictionary that ever were almost suspected to be English; but we cannot help wishing, that the author had trusted less to the judgment of those who may consult him, and had oftener passed his own censure upon those words which are not of approved use, tho’ sometimes to be met with in authors of no mean name. Where a work is admitted to be highly useful, and the execution of it intitled to praise; the adding, that it might have been more useful, can scarcely, we hope, be deemed a censure of it. The merit of Mr. Johnson’s dictionary is so great, that it cannot detract from it to take notice of some defects, the supplying which, would, in our judgment, add a considerable share of merit to that which it already possesses. Those defects consist chiefly in the plan, which appears to us not to be sufficiently grammatical. The different significations of a word are indeed collected; but they are seldom digested into general classes, or ranged under the meaning which the word principally expresses. And sufficient care has not been 2
taken to distinguish the words apparently synonomous. The only method of explaining what we intend, is by inserting an article or two from Mr. Johnson, and by opposing to them the same articles, digested in the manner which we would have wished him to have followed.
BUT conjunct. [buze, buzan, Saxon.]
2
1. Except.
An emission of immateriate virtues we are a little doubtful to
propound, it is so prodigious: but that it is so constantly avouched
by many.
Bacon.
Who can it be, ye gods! but perjur’d Lycon?
Who can inspire such storms of rage, but Lycon?
Where has my sword left one so black, but Lycon?
Smith’s Phaedra and Hippolitus.
Your poem hath been printed, and we have no objection but the
obscurity of several passages, by our ignorance in facts and
persons.
Swift.
2. Yet; nevertheless. It sometimes only enforces yet.
Then let him speak, and any that shall stand without, shall hear his
voice plainly; but yet made extreme sharp and exile, like the voice
of puppets: and yet the articulate sounds of the words will not be
confounded.
Bacon’s Nat. Hist. No 155.
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Our wants are many, and grievous to be borne, but quite of another
kind.
Swift.
3. The particle which introduces the minor of a syllogism; now.
If there be a liberty and possibility for a man to kill himself to–day,
then it is not absolutely necessary that he shall live till to–morrow;
but there is such a liberty, therefore no such necessity.
Bramhall against Hobbes.
God will one time or another make a difference between the good
and the evil. But there is little or no difference made in this world:
therefore there must be another world, wherein this difference shall
be made.
3
Watt’s Logic, Introduct.
4. Only; nothing more than.
If my offence be of mortal kind,
That not my service, past or present sorrows,
Can ransom me into his love again;
But to know so, must be my benefit.
Shakesp. Othello.
And but infirmity,
Which waits upon worn times, hath something seiz’d
His wish’d ability, he had himself
The lands and waters measur’d.
Shak. Winter’s Tale.
What nymph soe’er his voice but hears,
Will be my rival, tho’ she have but ears.
Ben. Johnson.
No, Aurengzebe, you merit all my heart,
And I’m too noble but to give a part.
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Dryden.
Did but men consider the true notion of God, he would appear to be
full of goodness.
Tillotson.
If we do but put virtue and vice in equal circumstances, the advantages of ease and pleasure will be found to be on the side of religion. Tillotson.
The mischiefs or harms that come by play, inadvertency, or
ignorance, are not at all, or but very gently, to be taken notice of.
Locke on Education.
If a reader examines Horace’s art of poetry, he will find but very
few precepts in it, which he may not meet with in Aristotle.
Addison. Spectator.
Prepar’d I stand: he was but born to try
The lot of man, to suffer and to die.
Pope’s Odyssey.
5. Than.
The full moon was no sooner up, and shining in all its brightness,
but he privately opened the gate of paradise.
Guardian, No 167.
6. But that; without this consequence that.
Frosts that constrain the ground,
Do seldom their usurping power withdraw,
But raging floods pursue their hasty hand.
Dryden.
7. Otherwise than that.
It cannot be but nature hath some director, of infinite power, to
guide her in all her ways.
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Hooker, b. i. § 3.
Who shall believe,
But you misuse the reverence of your place?
Shakesp.
8. Not otherwise than.
A genius so elevated and unconfined as Mr. Cowley’s, was but
necessary to make Pindar speak English.
Dryden.
9. By any other means than.
Out of that will I cause those of Cyprus to mutiny: whose
qualification shall come into no true taste again, but by
transplanting of Cassio.
Shakesp. Othello.
10. If it were not for this; if this were not.
Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse
Full of cruzades. And but my noble Moor
Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness,
As jealous creatures are, it were enough
To put him to ill–thinking.
Shakesp. Othello.
I here do give thee that with all my heart,
Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart
I would keep from thee.
Shakesp. Othello.
11. However; howbeit.
I do not doubt but I have been to blame;
But, to pursue the end for which I came,
Unite your subjects first, then let us go,
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And pour their common rage upon the foe.
Dryden.
12. It is used after no doubt, no question, and such words, and signifies the same with that. It sometimes is joined with that.
They made no account, but that the navy should be absolutely
master of the seas.
Bacon’s War with Spain.
I fancied to myself a kind of ease in the change of the paroxysm;
never suspecting but that the humour would have wasted itself.
Dryden.
There is no question but the King of Spain will reform most of the
abuses.
Addison on Italy.
13. That. This seems no proper sense in this place.
It is not therefore impossible, but I may alter the complexion of my
play, to restore myself into the good graces of my fair criticks.
Dryden’s Aurengzebe, Preface.
14. Otherwise than.
I should sin
To think but nobly of my grandmother.
Shakesp. Tempest.
15. Even; not longer ago than.
Beroe but now I left; whom, pin’d with pain,
Her age and anguish from these rites detain.
Dryden.
It is evident, in the instance I gave but now, the consciousness
went along.
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Locke.
16. A particle by which the meaning of the foregoing sentence is bounded or
restrained.
Thus fights Ulysses, thus his fame extends,
A formidable man, but to his friends.
Dryden.
17. An objective particle; yet it may be objected.
But yet, Madam—
I do not like but yet; it does allay
The good precedence; fie upon but yet!
But yet is as a jaylour, to bring forth
Some monstrous malefactor.
Shakesp. Antony and Cleop.
Must the heart then have been formed and constituted, before the
blood was in being? But here again, the substance of the heart itself
is most certainly made and nourished by the blood, which is
conveyed to it by the coronary arteries.
Bentl.
18. But for; without; had not this been.
Rash man! forbear, but for some unbelief,
My joy had been as fatal as my grief.
Waller.
Her head was bare,
But for her native ornament of hair,
Which in a simple knot was ty’d above.
Dryden’s Fables.
When the fair boy receiv’d the gift of right,
And, but for mischief, you had dy’d for spight.
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Dryden.
BUT, an English particle which denotes opposition, and which, according to the different 3
modifications of the general sense of opposition, sometimes holds the place of an adverb, sometimes of a preposition, sometimes of a conjunction, and sometimes even of an interjection.
It serves as a conjunction of four different species, as an adversitive, as an alternative, as a conductive, and as a transitive conjunction. In its original and most proper meaning, however, it seems to be an adversitive conjunction, in the sense in which it is synonomous with however; and in which it is expressed in Latin by sed, in French by mais. I should have done this, but was prevented: I should have done this; I was however prevented. The difference betwixt these two particles seems to consist chiefly in this, That but must always stand at the beginning of the sentence whose opposition it marks to what went before; whereas however is introduced more gracefully after the beginning of the opposed sentence: and that the construction may often be continued, when we make use of but; whereas, it must always be interrupted when we make use of however.
The use of but, upon this account, seems often to mark a more precipitate keenness in denoting the opposition, than the use of however. If, in talking of a quarrel, a person should say, I should have made some apology for my conduct, but was prevented by his insolence; he would seem to express more passion and keenness than if he had said, I should have made some apology for my conduct, I was however prevented by his insolence.
2. But is likewise an alternative conjunction in the sense in which it is nearly synonomous with the English unless, and except, with the Latin nisi, and with the French sinon. The people are not to be satisfied, but by remitting them some of their taxes. Unless by remitting them, etc. Except by remitting them, etc. The first expression seems to mark more peculiarly the insufficiency of every other means to pacify the people, but that which is proposed. The second seems to mark more
peculiarly, that either this means must be employed, or the public disturbances will go on, and is therefore more alternative than the first. The third expression seems to mark the sense of one who out of all the means that can be proposed, chuses that
which is most effectual. When we make use of unless, we do not mark that we have considered of any other means besides that which is proposed. Whereas, when we
make use of but or except, we show that we have considered of some other means.
But marks a negative rejection of every other means, but those proposed. Except a positive choice of the means proposed. Unless marks neither the one nor the other; and merely denotes an alternative, that either this must be done, or that will follow.
3. But is likewise a conductive conjunction in the sense in which it is nearly synonomous with the Latin quin, with the French que, and with the English than or that, when the first is preceded and the other followed by the particles of negation no or not. The full moon was no sooner up, than he privately opened the gate of paradise. But he privately opened, etc. It cannot be doubted, that th