William, a learned and ingenious printer, was born at Edinburgh in the year 1740. He received a fair education at a school in Duddingston, from which, at the early age of twelve years, he was removed, and apprenticed for six years and a half, to Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill, printers to the university. To this occupation he applied himself with great assiduity, and devoted his evenings to the acquisition of knowledge. During his apprenticeship he was permitted to attend some of the university lectures. The Edinburgh Philosophical Society having offered a silver medal for the most accurate edition of a Latin classic, Smellie set and corrected an edition of Terence, which obtained this prize for his employers. His edition, which bears the date of 1758, but was actually printed during the preceding year, has been described as immaculate; but of the literal accuracy of this description we entertain some doubt. His apprenticeship was completed on the 1st of April 1759; and in the ensuing month of September, he agreed to transfer his services to the office of Murray and Cochrane. In this new situation, Smellie's employers allowed him three hours a day for the prosecution of his academical studies. He studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, moral and natural philosophy. He besides attended all the medical courses, including the lectures on chemistry and botany. The Hebrew class he attended in the year 1758, with the immediate view of preparing himself to superintend the printing of Dr Robertson's Hebrew Grammar. In 1763, then in his twenty-third year, he married and settled down to his books. In 1760 he had become a member of the Newtonian society, a literary association chiefly composed of young men educated in the university, and many of whom subsequently rose to be men of influence in the country. A new association, of which he acted as secretary, was formed in the year 1778, under the denomination of the Newtonian Club. Most of the other members were connected with the medical profession, and five of them either then were, or afterwards became, medical professors in the university. In the list of these associates we find the names of Dugald Stewart and James Gregory. For the different branches of natural history Smellie had evinced an early predilection. To the study of botany he devoted so much attention, that in 1765 his "Dissertations on the Sexes of Plants" gained the gold medal given by Dr Hope. In this dissertation, which was inserted in the first edition of this Encyclopaedia, he strenuously opposed the doctrines of Linnaeus. The substance of it was incorporated in his Philosophy of Natural History, and his opinions were then controverted by Dr Rotherham, afterwards professor of natural philosophy at St Andrews. (Smellie's Philosophy of Natural History, vol. i., p. 245.)

On the 25th of March 1765 he commenced business as a printer, in conjunction with two brothers named Robert and William Auld, which was next year to be merged into the new company of Balfour, W. Auld, and Smellie, and subsequently into that of Balfour and Smellie. He was intimate with Lord Kames, and he incidentally mentions his supping with his lordship in company with Hume and other guests. He was likewise a guest at the learned suppers of Lord Monboddo; and he reckoned Lord Hailes, as well as Lord Gardenstone, among his friends.

Balfour and Smellie were appointed printers to the university. The chief advantage which attended this appointment was the profit of printing the dissertations written by candidates for medical degrees. Smellie likewise printed Smellie's theses written by candidates for admission to the Faculty of Advocates; and his knowledge of the Latin language was in both cases found very serviceable to the writers. He rendered material assistance to his friend Dr Buchan in the composition of his Domestic Medicine, published at Edinburgh in the year 1770, and which attained to an enormous popularity.

The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica consisted of only three volumes, which began to be printed in the year 1771. The principal articles were written, compiled, or devised by Smellie, and he prepared and superintended the entire publication. "As you have informed me," says a letter of Andrew Bell, the chief proprietor, "that there are fifteen capital sciences which you will undertake for, and write up the subdivisions and detached parts, conformably to your plan, and likewise to prepare the whole work for the press, &c., &c., we hereby agree to allow you L200 for your trouble." If his capital sciences had not exceeded the old number of seven, this remuneration could scarcely have been considered as extravagant. One of his original articles, contributed to this edition, was that on "Æther," which attracted a considerable degree of attention, and gave no small offence to Dr Cullen, whose theory was there exposed, though without any mention of his name. Of the second edition of the Encyclopedia Smellie was offered a share, apparently a third, conjoined with the charge of editorship. This offer he unfortunately declined, and thus lost the only golden opportunity that fortune ever presented to him. "At the death of Mr Macfarquhar, printer, in April 1793, the whole work became the property of Mr Bell. It is well known that Mr Macfarquhar left a handsome fortune to his family, all or mostly derived from the profits of the Encyclopedia; and that Mr Bell died in great affluence, besides possessing the entire property of that vast work, every shilling of which may be fairly stated as having grown from the labours of Mr Smellie in the original fabrication of the work, which is confessedly superior, and all of which he and his family might have shared in equally with Mr Bell and the other proprietor, if he had not been too fastidious in his notions, and perhaps too timid in his views of the risk which might have been incurred in the mercantile part of the speculation." (Kerr's Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of William Smellie, vol. i., p. 363, Edin. 1811, 2 vols. 8vo.)

Smellie afterwards embarked in a speculation which did not prove so lucrative. This was The Edinburgh Magazine and Review, which began in the month of October 1773, and extended over five volumes, closing with the number for August 1776. Of the Society of Antiquaries, instituted at Edinburgh in 1780, Smellie was an original member. In 1781 he was elected superintendent of the Museum of Natural History, which they proposed adding to their antiquarian cabinet. He afterwards published an Account of the Institution and Progress of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland, Edin. 1782, 4to. To this account he added a second part in 1784. He was elected to the office of secretary in 1793. This new institution excited the jealousy of some other learned bodies; but a royal charter was finally got ratified in the month of May 1783. At the request of the Society of Antiquaries he had, in 1781, digested the plan of a statistical account of all the parishes of Scotland. The circulation of this plan did not excite much industry; but, at no distant period, it was followed by an extensive and important work. As superintendent of the museum, he was authorized to deliver in their hall a course of lectures on natural history. "His object was to deliver lectures on the philosophy of natural history, which is a subject totally different from what a public professor is obliged to teach. A professor must instruct his students in the technical and elementary part of the science; but the private lecturer was to confine himself to general views of the economy of nature." (Smellie's Account of the Society of Antiquaries, part ii., p. 24.) The professor of natural history, who certainly had reason to fear such a rival, was alarmed at what he considered as an encroachment on his province, and this plan of lectures was reluctantly abandoned. On the death of Dr Ramsay, in the year 1775, Smellie had offered himself as a candidate for the professorship of natural history, but it was bestowed upon another.

Smellie continued to prosecute his favourite study, and he published Natural History, General and Particular, by the Count de Buffon, translated into English, Edin., 1781, 8 vols., 8vo. The translator was honoured with the correspondence of Buffon, and likewise of Pennant. The firm of Balloir and Smellie having been dissolved, that of Creech and Smellie began business on the 14th of September 1782, and continued it till the close of the year 1789. After the termination of these different partnerships, he continued the business on his own account. His next publication was, An Address to the People of Scotland on the Nature, Powers, and Privileges of Juries, Edin., 1784, 8vo. This tract excited a considerable degree of attention; and it was quoted with much approbation by Lord Erskine in his famous speech in defence of Dr Shipley, dean of St Asaph. He published several other pamphlets, which chiefly related to local politics. But the most elaborate of his works is The Philosophy of Natural History, Edin., 1790, 4to. This is an ingenious book, written in a very pleasing style, and it accordingly experienced a favourable reception. It was reprinted at Dublin and Philadelphia. Lichtenstein published a German translation, to which some notes were added by C.A. W. Zimmermann. His plan, however, was not yet completed, and he immediately applied himself to the preparation of a second volume. He lived to bring it to a conclusion, though not to make any arrangement for its publication. During the last years of his life his health appears to have been infirm and precarious. After a long illness, he died on the 24th of June 1795, at the age of sixty-five. He left a widow, with four sons and four daughters; two sons and three daughters having died before their father.

Of his Philosophy of Natural History, the second volume was published by his son in the year 1799. Another posthumous work speedily followed, Literary and Characteristical Lives of John Gregory, M.D., Henry Home, Lord Kames, David Hume, Esq., and Adam Smith, LL.D. To which are added a Dissertation on Public Spirit, and Three Essays, Edinb., 1800, 8vo. His original plan comprehended the lives of other twenty-five men of literary eminence with whom he was personally acquainted.

Smellie appears to have been a man of excellent talents, and of extensive knowledge. His disposition was social, his habits were convivial, and he was distinguished by a sarcastic vein of wit and humour. Burns describes him as "a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits, that he had ever met with." And in the following lines, which allude to a club called the Crochallan Fencibles, he has exhibited a graphic delineation of Smellie:

"To Crochallan came The old cock'd hat, the grey surtouk, the same; His twinkling beard just rising in its might, 'Twas four long nights and days to shaving night; His uncombed grizzly locks, wild staring, thatch'd; A head for thought profound and clear, unmatch'd; Yet though his caustic wit was biting, rude, His heart was warm, benevolent, and good."