"Adam Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric:--Wilbur Samuel Howell,CM, XXXVI:393-418.

Adam Smith was a British rhetorician who lived during the mid 1700's. He delivered several sets of lectures on rhetoric in Edinburgh, Scotland between the fall and winter of 1748-49. These lectures along with a few other lectures were the only speeches of Smith's that biographers could save. Because as Smith saw death draw near, he gave orders to have all of his papers destroyed, except the works that were ready for publication. There were 16 volumes of his manuscripts that were completely destroyed. Smith did however have three well-qualified witnesses make comments upon his lectures rhetoric. They were John Millar, James Woodrow, and Hugh Blair. Millar heard Smith's original lectures on rhetoric in Edinburgh and commented on them as saying, "the best method of explaining and illustrating the various powers of the human mind, the most useful part of metaphysics, arises from an examination of the several ways of communicating our thoughts by speech, and from an attention to the principles of those literary compositions, which contribute to persuasion or entertainment..." (394)

Smith did receive negative criticism from some. Francis Hirst spoke despairingly of Smith's speeches. He concluded that the world is probably not much the poorer in describing Smith's speeches. Hirst claimed that Smith was little more than a borrower from the French School of Rhetoric. Smith began his education of Rhetoric when he entered the University of Glasgow in 1737 at the age of 14 and graduated with great distinction as master of the arts in 1740. He then went on to study Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English literature at Balliol College and Oxford. Since Smith was a Scottish beneficiary towards getting his education, the church of England made him the promise that he would have to become a practicing clergymen in Scotland. It was in Scotland where Smith and Lord Kames had visions of creating a growing community of speakers and writers in that country.

A man named Lothian wrote an edition of Smith's notebooks but historians aren't even sure if the notebook is actually Smith's. It is also hard to tell if the copyist found implications on the notes and edited them out. Lothian did say that Smith was a man of real genius and when he spoke, his contemporaries were impressed by his lectures.

Adam Smiths system of rhetoric differs in 2 ways. First, he made rhetoric the general theory for all branches of literature. And second, he constructed a theory from previous rhetoric's such as Aristotle, Quintillian, Cicero, and Newton that he saw valid for his generation. These theories that Smith improved on were put into speeches and were the first of their kind to be delivered in Great Britain. These speeches were on narrative discourse, historical discourse, and didactic discourse which seeks to prove proposition to an audience. Didactic discourse also seeks to deliver a system of science to a community of learning. Through these various discourses, Smith tried to make rhetoric appear poetic in a sense.

Smith may confidently be called the earliest and most independent of the New British rhetoricians of the 18th century. Rhetorical theory in the 19th century might have taken a better turn than it did had Adam Smith's lectures been able to survive.

Pete Rader PJR5694@uncwil.edu