The plan and all the principal articles of this now important work were in this first edition devised and written by William Smellie. Smellie began life as a compositor, and he used to lay down his composing-stick for an hour or two daily to attend the classes of the Edinburgh University. At the age of nineteen he was engaged by Murray and Cochrane as corrector of their press in general and conductor and compiler of the _Scots Magazine_ at a salary of sixteen shillings a week. If the saying that “Edinburgh never had a Grub Street” is true, it must have arisen rather from the perseverance of the writers than from the uniform generosity of the publishers. The agreement upon which the _Encyclopædia_ was undertaken was still in existence when Kerr wrote Smellie’s _Life_; as a literary curiosity we quote it:-- “Mr. Andrew Bell to Mr. William Smellie. “SIR,--As we are engaged in publishing a ‘Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences,’ and as you have informed us that there are fifteen capital sciences, which you will undertake for, and write up the sub-divisions and detached parts of them, conforming to your plan, and likewise to prepare the whole work for the press, &c., &c. We hereby agree to allow you £200 for your trouble.” The first proprietors were Andrew Bell, engraver, and Colin Macfarquhar, printer. The publication was commenced in weekly numbers in 1771, and completed in 1773, by which time the bulk in all consisted only of three small quarto volumes. A second edition was called for in 1776, and Smellie was offered a share in the property, but he declined to have anything more to do with it, as upon the recommendation of “a very distinguished nobleman” it was resolved to introduce a complete system of biography. The proprietors engaged, instead, James Tytler, a laborious miscellaneous writer, and a man of extraordinary knowledge. A large proportion of the additional matter, by which the work was extended from three to ten volumes, was due to his pen, but the payment for this labour is said to have been very small, and the unfortunate author was not able to support his family in a style superior to that of a common labourer. At one time, during the progress of the work, he lived at the village of Duddingston, in the house of a washerwoman, whose tub inverted formed the only desk at his disposal, and one of his children was frequently despatched with a parcel of “copy” upon which their next meal depended.