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London Review of Books

That sh—te Creech subscriber-only content

James Buchan

  • The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in 18th-Century Britain, Ireland and America by Richard Sher  Buy this book

In March 1776, James Boswell and Samuel Johnson visited Pembroke College, Oxford and called on the master, William Adams. According to Richard Sher, Boswell wrote in his journal how dismayed he had been to see in the master’s library a copy of the quarto edition of David Hume’s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects of 1758, handsomely bound in morocco leather. Boswell believed, Sher writes, that an ‘infidel’ writer such as Hume had no right to such marks of ‘politeness and respect’ from Christian gentlemen.

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James Buchan’s books include Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money, Crowded with Genius and, most recently, Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty.