With regard to the point raised by Michael Perelman and Rod Hay concerning an alleged Smithian desire to rid himself of his Scottish accent, recall that Ross makes only an oblique reference to the question, commenting in reference to Smith's Edinburgh lectures from 1748-51 that "his auditors could also find in Smith, from his years of being at Oxford, someone with a command of the received standard southern English. Scots were anxious to acquire this skill, to get on in an imperial world administered from London," and citing in support the Edinburgh Review of 1755 and Gentleman's Magazine of 1790 (Ross, Life of Adam Smith, p. 85). We find no suggestion in Rae's Life that Smith himself consciously sought to improve his English locution (though see p. 126 of Ross for conflicting testimony from Smith's auditors on his success in that activity), but some support for the claim of a more generalized Scottish desire in that regard is found in the Memoirs of Francis Horner. After completing his studies at the Univ. of Edinburgh, young Francis was sent by his father to live with the Rev. John Hewlett, near London. In October, 1797, Rev. Hewlett wrote the senior Horner, "I have the pleasure to inform you ... that the principal object for which your son came to England has been fully accomplished. He has certainly got rid of the Scottish accent and pronunciation, and acquired the English so completely as not to be distinguished from a native" (Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, MP, edited by Leonard Horner; Boston: Little Brown, 1853, p. 40). Glenn Hueckel