“Supposing, therefore, that you have duly prepared yourself for the worst by all these reflections, I proceed to tell you the melancholy news that your book has been very unfortunate, for the public seem disposed to applaud it extremely. It was looked for by the foolish people with some impatience; and the mob of literati are beginning already to be very loud in its praises. Three bishops called yesterday at Millar’s shop in order to buy copies, and to ask questions about the author. The Bishop of Peterborough said he had passed the evening in a company where he heard it extolled above all books in the world. The Duke of Argyle is more decisive than he used to be in its favour. I suppose he either considers it as an exotic, or thinks the author will be very serviceable to him in the Glasgow elections. Lord Lyttelton says that Robertson and Smith and Bower are the glories of English literature. Oswald protests he does not know whether he has reaped more instruction or entertainment from it, but you may easily judge what reliance can be placed on his judgment. He has been engaged all his life in public business, and he never sees any faults in his friends. Millar exults and brags that two-thirds of the edition are already sold, and that he is now sure of success. You see what a son of the earth that is, to value books only by the profit they bring him. In that view, I believe, it may prove a very good book. “Charles Townshend, who passes for the cleverest fellow in England, is so much taken with the performance, that he said to Oswald he would put the Duke of Buccleugh under the author’s care, and would make it worth his while to accept of that charge. As soon as I heard this, I called on him twice with a view of talking with him about the matter, and of convincing him of the propriety of sending that young gentleman to Glasgow, for I could not hope that he could offer you any terms which would tempt you to renounce your professorship; but I missed him. Mr. Townshend passes for being a little uncertain in his resolutions, so perhaps you need not build much on his sally.” On this occasion, as will appear in a later chapter, Townshend proved true to his resolve and false to his reputation. Burke, who afterwards became one of Smith’s most intimate friends, was at this time known for his philosophical inquiry into the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). He was also a principal contributor to the _Annual Register_; and that publication, in its admirable account of books published during the year 1759, quotes a long passage from the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, with a prefatory tribute from Burke’s pen, which might quench the thirst of the thirstiest author. Smith is praised for having struck out a new, and at the same time a perfectly natural, road of ethical speculation.