THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURAL HISTORY

London, England: Printed for the Heirs of Charles Elliot; and C. Elliot and T. Kay T. Cadell, and C.G. J. & J. Robinsons, 1790. First Edition. Leather-bound. Very Good Plus. Quarto. Full leather, originally acid-treated for effect. Gilt chain-and-dot border, largely rubbed off. Printed on high rag-content laid bond. Bright and uniformly internally excellent. A second volume was published in 1799, four years after Smellie's death from stomach cancer, no doubt exacerbated by his almost nightly attendance at the local Oyster Bar and Ale House situated downstairs from Smallie's printing establishment. Willim Smellie (1740-1795) was a Scottish polymath and master printer who from an early age exhibited a prodigious and sharp intellect and curiosity about topics ranging from Botany to Psychology to Political Justice and Reform. "...As an intellectual, Smellie courted controversy by defying systems and authorities: he contradicted Linnaeus on the sexuality of plants, proposed that human reason was only an extension of the instincts common to all animals, promoted an early psychology of dreams, and made natural history accessible to women. Smellie's reputation as a natural historian was such that Charles Elliot paid £1000 for the copyright to volume one of Smellie's Philosophy of Natural History, which appeared in 1790, shortly after Elliot's death...Still, it was conviviality not politics which derailed Smellie's ambitions and shortened his life. He enjoyed the tavern scene, spending most evenings in oyster bars and ale houses. His frequent haunt was Douglas's tavern in the Anchor Close, where Smellie kept his printing house and his lodgings. There Smellie founded the Crochallan Fencibles, a drinking club immortalized in the verse of his close friend and political ally Robert Burns, whose obscene Merry Muses of Caledonia was written for the club and printed by Alexander Smellie (1800). When Smellie died of stomach cancer in 1795, his printing firm was nearly insolvent, rescued only by £395 from Elliot's estate. Smellie was buried in Greyfriars kirkyard, Edinburgh. He was survived by nine of his thirteen children..."