It is but a continuation of what we have been saying to add that the old Edinburgh of those defunct decades had already an established reputation as a literary metropolis. The rise of the literary reputation of Edinburgh may date, for all purposes except such as shallow present scholarship would call merely antiquarian, from the time when Allan Ramsay set up his circulating library in the High Street, and supplied the lieges furtively with novels, plays, and song-books, including his own poems. This was about the year 1725, when his countryman, Thomson, was publishing in London the first portion of his _Seasons_. Thomson himself, and his contemporaries or immediate successors, Mallet, Smollett, Armstrong, Meikle, Macpherson, and Falconer, all rank in the list of literary Scots; but they were _Scoti extra Scotiam agentes_, and had, most of them, but an incidental connection with Edinburgh. The poets Robert Blair and James Beattie, the philosopher Reid, and the theologian and critic Dr. George Campbell, were not only literary Scots, but literary Scots whose lives were spent on their own side of the Tweed; but, with the exception of Blair, none of them were natives of Edinburgh, and even Blair did not live there. After Ramsay, in short, the early literary fame of Edinburgh is associated with the names of a cluster of men who, born in different parts of Scotland, had, from various chances, taken up their abode in Edinburgh, and who resided there, more or less permanently, during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The most prominent men of this cluster were these:—David Hume (1711–1776), known as a philosophical writer since the year 1738, and who, though he spent a good many years of his literary life in England and in France, was for the last twenty years of it, and these the most busy, a resident in Edinburgh; Hume’s senior and survivor, Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), one of the judges of the Court of Session, still remembered for the contrast between the coarse Scottish facetiousness of his manners and the studied fineness of his writings; the learned and eccentric Burnet, Lord Monboddo (1714–1799), also a judge of Session, at whose Attic suppers in the Old Town all the talent and beauty of Edinburgh were for many years regularly assembled; the pompous but sensible Dr. Hugh Blair (1718–1799), Professor of Belles Lettres in the University, and one of the clergymen of the city; his more celebrated colleague, Dr. Robertson the historian (1722–1793), Principal of the University, and likewise one of the city clergymen; the minor historical writers and antiquarians, Tytler of Woodhouselee (1711–1792), Dr. Henry (1718–1790), Lord Hailes (1726–1792), Dr. Adam Ferguson (1724–1816), and Dr. Gilbert Stuart (1742–1786); the poet John Home, author of the tragedy of _Douglas_ (1722–1808), once the Rev. Mr. Home, but long bereft of that title, and known since 1779 as a retired man of letters in Edinburgh; the illustrious Adam Smith (1723–1790),