to receive from Smith the private library of the Moral Philosophy class; next day at a meeting of Senatus he was paid the balance due to him on his accounts as Quaestor, and was entrusted with a copy of Foulis’s large Homer, which they asked him to carry to London and deliver, in their name, to Sir James Gray, as a present to his Sicilian majesty, who had shown them some favour; and the Senate-room of Glasgow knew him no more.

His parting with his students was not quite so simple.  They made some difficulty, as he seems to have anticipated, about taking back the fees they had paid him for his class, and he was obliged to resort almost to force before he succeeded in getting them to do so.  The curious scene is described by Alexander Fraser Tytler (Lord Woodhouselee) in his Life of Lord Kames: “After concluding his last lecture, and publicly announcing from the chair that he was now taking a final leave of his auditors, acquainting them at the same time with the arrangements he had made, to the best of his power, for their benefit, he drew from his pocket the several fees of the students, wrapped up in separate paper parcels, and beginning to call up each man by his name, he delivered to the first who was called the money into his hand.  The young man peremptorily refused to accept it, declaring that the instruction and pleasure he had already received was much more than he either had repaid or ever could compensate, and a general cry was heard from every one in the room to the same effect.  But Mr. Smith was not to be bent from his purpose.  After warmly expressing his feelings of gratitude and the strong sense he had of the regard shown to him by his young friends, he told them this was a matter betwixt him and his own mind, and that he could not rest satisfied unless he performed what he deemed right and proper.  ’You must not refuse me this satisfaction; nay, by heavens, gentlemen, you shall not;’ and seizing by the coat the young man who stood next him, he thrust the money into his pocket and then pushed him from him.  The rest saw it was in vain to contest the matter, and were obliged to let him have his own way."[138]

This is a signal proof of the scrupulous delicacy of Smith’s honour; he had firmly determined not to touch a shilling of this money, and if the students had persisted in refusing it he intended, as we have seen, to give it to the funds of the University.  Many may think his delicacy even excessive, for it is common enough for a professor’s class to be conducted by a substitute in the absence, through ill-health or other causes, of the professor himself, and nobody thinks the students suffer any such injury by the arrangement as to call for even a reduction of the fees.  What Smith would have done had his absence been due to ill-health one cannot say, but as his engagement with the students for a session’s lectures was broken off by his own spontaneous acceptance of an office of profit, he felt he could not honourably retain the wages when he had failed to implement the engagement,—­a thing which a barrister in large practice does without scruple every day.