(Sir Thomas), was born at Walden in Essex in 1512. At 14 he was sent to Queen's college Cambridge, where he distinguished himself so much, that he was made Henry VIII's scholar together with John Cheke. He was chosen a fellow of his college in 1531, and appointed two years after to read the public Greek lecture. The common mode of reading Greek at that time was very faulty; the same found being given to the letters and diphthongs ου, υ, ει, οι, etc. Mr Smith and Mr Cheke had been for some time sensible that this pronunciation was wrong: and after a good deal of consultation and research, they agreed to introduce that mode of reading which prevails at present. Mr Smith was lecturing on Aristotle de Republica in Greek. At first he dropped a word or two at intervals in the new pronunciation, and sometimes he would stop as if he had committed a mistake and correct himself. No notice was taken of this for two or three days; but as he repeated more frequently, his audience began to wonder at the unusual sounds, and at last some of his friends mentioned to him what they had remarked. He owned that something was in agitation, but that it was not yet sufficiently digested to be made public. They entreated him earnestly to discover his project: he did so; and in a short time great numbers reported to him for information. The new pronunciation was adopted with enthusiasm, and soon became universal at Cambridge. It was afterwards opposed by Bishop Gardiner the chancellor; but its superiority to the old mode was so visible, that in a few years it spread over all England.

In 1539 he travelled into foreign countries, and studied for some time in the universities of France and Italy. On his return he was made regius professor of civil law at Cambridge. About this time he published a treatise on the mode of pronouncing English. He was useful likewise in promoting the reformation. Having gone into the family of the duke of Somerset, the protector during the minority of Edward VI, he was employed by that nobleman in public affairs; and in 1548 was made secretary of state, and received the honour of knighthood. While that nobleman continued in office, he was sent ambassador, first to Brussels and afterwards to France.

Upon Mary's accession he lost all his places, but was fortunate enough to preserve the friendship of Gardiner and Bonner. He was exempted from persecution, and was allowed, probably by their influence, a pension of £100. During Elizabeth's reign he was employed in public affairs, and was sent three times by that princess as her ambassador to France. He died in 1577. His abilities were excellent, and his attainments uncommonly great: He was a philosopher, a physician, a chemist, mathematician, linguist, historian, and architect. He wrote, 1. A treatise called the English Commonwealth. 2. A letter De Rebus et Emendata Lingua Graeca Pronunciatione. 3. De Moribus Turcarum. 4. De Druidum Moribus.

(Edmund), a distinguished English poet, the only son of Mr Neale an eminent merchant, by a daughter of baron Lechmere, was born in 1663. By his father's death he was left young to the care of Mr Smith, who had married his father's sister, and who treated him with so much tenderness, that at the death of his generous guardian he assumed his name. His writings are not many, and those are scattered about in miscellaneous and collections: his celebrated tragedy of Phaedra and Hippolitus was acted in 1707; and being introduced at a time when the Italian opera so much engrossed the polite world, gave Mr Addison, who wrote the prologue, an opportunity to rally the vitiated taste of the public. However, notwithstanding the esteem it has always been held in, it is perhaps rather to be considered as a fine poem than as a good play. This tragedy, with a Poem to the memory of Mr John Philips, three or four Odes, with a Latin oration spoken at Oxford in loudem Thomae Bodleii, were published as his works by his friend Mr Oldifworth. Mr Smith died in 1710, sunk into indolence and intemperance by poverty and disappointments; the hard fate of many a man of genius.

(John), an excellent mezzotinter, flourished about 1700; but neither the time of his birth nor death are accurately known. He united softness with strength, and finished with freedom. He served his time with one Tillet a painter in Moorfields; and as soon as he became his own master, learned from Becket the secret of mezzotinto, and being farther instructed by Van der Vaart, was taken to work in Sir Godfrey Kneller's house; and as he was to be the publisher of that master's works, doubtless received considerable hints from him, which he amply repaid. "To posterity perhaps his prints (says Mr Walpole) will carry an idea of something burlesque; perukes of an enormous length flowing over suits of armour, compose wonderful habits of fashion. It is equally strange that fashion could introduce the one, and establish the practice of representing the other, when it was out of fashion." Smith excelled in exhibiting both, as he found them in the portraits of Kneller. Smith (Dr Adam), the celebrated author of the Transactions Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of the Royal Nations, was the only son of Adam Smith comptroller of the customs at Kirkaldy, and of Margaret Douglas daughter of Mr Douglas of Stratherny. He was born at Kirkaldy on the 5th June 1723, a few months after the death of his father. His constitution during his infancy was infirm and sickly, and required all the care of his surviving parent. When only three years old he was carried by his mother to Stratherny on a visit to his uncle Mr Douglas; and happening one day to be amusing himself alone at the door of the house, he was stolen by a party of those vagrants who in Scotland are called tinkers. Luckily he was missed immediately, and the vagrants pursued and overtaken in Leslie wood; and thus Dr Smith was preserved to extend the bounds of science, and reform the commercial policy of Europe.

He received the rudiments of his education in the school of Kirkaldy under David Miller, a teacher of considerable eminence, and whose name deserves to be recorded on account of the great number of eminent men which that seminary produced while under his direction. Dr Smith, even while at school, attracted notice by his passionate attachment to books, and by the extraordinary powers of his memory; while his friendly and generous disposition gained and secured the affection of his schoolfellows. Even then he was remarkable for those habits which remained with him through life, of speaking to himself when alone and of absence in company. He was sent in 1737 to the university of Glasgow, where he remained till 1749, when he went to Balliol college Oxford, as an exhibitioner on Snell's foundation. His favourite pursuits while at the university were mathematics and natural philosophy. After his removal to England he frequently employed himself in translating, particularly from the French, with a view to the improvement of his own style: a practice which he often recommended to all who wished to cultivate the art of composition. It was probably then that he applied himself with the greatest care to the study of languages, of which, both ancient and modern, his knowledge was uncommonly extensive and accurate.

After seven years residence at Oxford he returned to Kirkaldy, and lived two years with his mother without any fixed plan for his future life. He had been deigned for the church of England; but disliking the ecclesiastical profession, he resolved to abandon it altogether, and to limit his ambition to the prospect of obtaining some of those preferments to which literary attainments lead in Scotland. In 1748 he fixed his residence in Edinburgh, and for three years read a course of lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres under the patronage of Lord Ramsay. In 1751 he was elected professor of logic in the university of Glasgow, and the year following was removed to the professorship of moral philosophy, vacant by the death of Mr Thomas Craigie the immediate successor of Dr Hutcheon. In this situation he remained 13 years, a period he used frequently to look back to as the most useful part of his life. His lectures on moral philosophy were divided into four parts: The first contained natural theology; in which he considered the proofs of the being and attributes of God, and those truths on which religion is founded; the second comprehended ethics, strictly so called, and consisted chiefly of those doctrines which he afterwards published in his theory of moral sentiments; in the third part he treated more at length of that part of morality called justice; and which, being susceptible of precise and accurate rules, is for that reason capable of a full and accurate explanation: in the last part of his lectures he examined those political regulations which are founded, not upon the principle of justice, but of expediency; and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity of a state. Under this view he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military governments: this contained the substance of his Wealth of Nations. In delivering his lectures he trusted almost entirely to extemporary elocution: his manner was plain and unaffected, and he never failed to interest his hearers. His reputation soon rose very high, and many students resorted to the university merely upon his account.

When his acquaintance with Mr Hume first commenced is uncertain, but it had ripened into friendship before the year 1752.

In 1759 he published his Theory of Moral Sentiments; a work which deservedly extended his reputation: for, though several of its conclusions be ill-founded, it must be allowed by all to be a singular effort of invention, ingenuity, and subtlety. Besides, it contains a great mixture of important truth; and, tho' the author has sometimes been misled, he has had the merit of directing the attention of philosophers to a view of human nature, which had formerly in a great measure escaped their notice. It abounds everywhere with the purest and most elevated maxims concerning the practical conduct of life; and when the subject of his work leads him to address the imagination and the heart, the variety and felicity of his illustrations, the richness and fluency of his eloquence, and the skill with which which he wins the attention and commands the passions of his readers, leave him among our British moralists without a rival.

Towards the end of 1763 Dr Smith received an invitation from Mr Charles Townsend to accompany the Duke of Buccleugh on his travels; and the liberal terms in which this proposal was made induced him to resign his office at Glasgow. He joined the Duke of Buccleugh at London early in the year 1764, and set out with him for the continent in the month of March following. After a stay of about ten days at Paris, they proceeded to Thoulouse, where they fixed their residence for about 18 months; thence they went by a pretty extensive route through the south of France to Geneva, where they passed two months. About Christmas 1765 they returned to Paris, and remained there till October following. The society in which Dr Smith passed these ten months may be conceived in consequence of the recommendation of Mr Hume. Turgot, Quesnay, Necker, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Marmonet, Madame Riccoboni, were among the number of his acquaintances; and some of them he continued ever after to reckon among the number of his friends. In October 1766 the duke of Buccleugh returned to England.

Dr Smith spent the next ten years of his life with his mother at Kirkaldy, occupied habitually in intense study, but unbending his mind at times in the company of some of his old schoolfellows, who still continued to reside near the place of their birth. In 1776 he published his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; a book so universally known, that any panegyric on it would be useless. The variety, importance, and (may we not add) novelty, of the information which it contains; the skill and comprehensiveness of mind displayed in the arrangement; the admirable illustrations with which it abounds; together with a plainness and perspicuity which makes it intelligible to all—render it unquestionably the most perfect work which has yet appeared on the general principles of any branch of legislation.

He spent the next two years of his life in London, where he enjoyed the society of some of the most eminent men of the age; but he removed to Edinburgh in 1778, in consequence of having been appointed, at the request of the duke of Buccleugh, one of the commissioners of the customs in Scotland. Here he spent the last twelve years of his life in an affluence which was more than equal to all his wants. But his studies seemed entirely suspended till the infirmities of old age reminded him, when it was too late, of what he yet owed to the public and to his own fame. The principal materials of the works which he had announced had long ago been collected, and little probably was wanting but a few years of health and retirement to complete them. The death of his mother, who had accompanied him to Edinburgh in 1784, together with that of his cousin Miss Douglas in 1788, contributed to frustrate these projects. They had been the objects of his affection for more than 60 years, and in their Society he had enjoyed from his infancy all that he ever knew of the endearments of a family. He was now alone and helpless; and though he bore his loss with equanimity, and regained apparently his former cheerfulness, yet his health and strength gradually declined till the period of his death, which happened in July 1790. Some days before his death he ordered all his papers to be burnt except a few essays, which have since been published.

Of the originality and comprehensiveness of his views; the extent, the variety, and the correctness of his information; the inexhaustible fertility of his invention—he has left behind him lasting monuments. To his private worth, the most certain of all testimonies may be found in that confidence, respect, and attachment, which followed him through all the various relations of life. He was habitually absent in conversation, and was apt when he spoke to deliver his ideas in the form of a lecture. He was rarely known to start a new topic himself, or to appear unprepared upon those topics that were introduced by others. In his external form and appearance there was nothing uncommon. When perfectly at ease, and when warmed with conversation, his gestures were animated and not ungraceful; and in the society of those he loved, his features were often brightened by a smile of inexplicable benignity. In the company of strangers, his tendency to absence, and perhaps still more his consciousness of that tendency, rendered his manners somewhat embarrassed; an effect which was probably not a little heightened by those speculative ideas of propriety which his recluse habits tended at once to perfect in his conception, and to diminish his power of realizing.