1 From Diapsalmata, aphorism 30 (ed. Ross, 1986, p.17).

2 Feuerbach (transl. Marian Evans, 2^nd edn, 1854) p.188.

3 Jonathan Parry (1996) describes the Second Reform Act of 1867 as “the most unintended revolution in the history of British politics” (p.216). Parry’s book is an indispensable guide to the Gladstonian politics of the period.

4 Raven (1951) p.3.

5 Aspects of Smith’s work have provided subject matter for several doctorate theses: Brown (1965); Bailey (1970); Nelson (1980); and Bediako (publ. 1997).

6 Notable instances are Riesen (1985); Rogerson (1995); and Clements (1978). A surprising exception is that of Nicholson (1998) where an otherwise exemplary historical review omits any reference to Smith.

7 They include Evans-Pritchard (in Beidelman, 1974) and Malinowski (1948). Mary Douglas, in particular, continues to emphasise his importance (e.g. Douglas, 1982; 1984).

8 Published as William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment (ed. Johnstone, 1995). Note should be taken also of the publication in the same year of John Day’s edition of the fairly fragmentary remains of Smith’s second and third series of Burnett Lectures (ed. Day, 1995).

9 R. Ackerman in Religion, 29 (1999) p.100. Ackerman goes on to make the perceptive remark: “With so many scholars discussing Smith from so many perspectives, I was struck by one matter unmentioned by anyone: Smith’s sexuality”.

10 Writing in 1893, T.K. Cheyne deserves much credit for noting the relevance of science to Smith’s work: “ . . . it was a great advantage for Robertson Smith both as a special Biblical critic and as a theologian to have obtained so good an insight into the methods of physical science, and among other things into the right use of hypothesis according to such men as Thomson and Tait” (Cheyne, 1893, pp.212f.).

11 “Professor Robertson Smith: a Problem”: in The Free Review (May 1, 1894) a short-lived free-thinking periodical edited by J.M. Robertson. The anonymous article is subscribed “Scotulus” and is referred to selectively in B&C, pp.571f.

12 Ib., pp.97f.

13 Ib., p.103: “Smith had special linguistic and mathematical faculty from the phrenological point of view: witness the fulness of the lower eyelid and the outer end of the eyebrow in his portrait”. Phrenology played an important part in the development of “faculty” psychology but its naive rationale had for the most part long been discarded, not least by Alexander Bain and George Lewes: cf. Young (1970) for a fuller account.

14 Ib., p.99.

15 Ib., p.103. It is significant that Bain, in his 1870 testimonial on Smith’s behalf, questioned Smith’s capacity for “original thought”: cf. B&C, p.65.

16 Foucault (1987) p.9.

17 Hippolyte Taine, one of the shrewdest contemporary observers of the British scene in the 1860s, was impressed by the intellectual debate: “The advent of philology, criticism and psychology into this field [religion] means an overhauling of theology and a transfiguring of the whole dogma. The effects are already apparent” (Taine, E.T. ed. Hyams, 1957).

18 The powerful impact of geology had occurred much earlier, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: see D.R. Dean (in Paradis and Postlewait, 1981, pp.111-136) for a particularly fine account of this.

19 British Quarterly Review, April, 1870: reprinted in L&E, pp.163-203.

20 Black and Chrystal (1912). As they note in their preface, the actual publication of the biography was delayed significantly by Black’s involvement (along with T.K. Cheyne) in the compilation of the Encyclopaedia Biblica, itself a tribute to Smith’s memory. Chrystal died in 1911, prior to the biography's publication.

21 Ed. Black and Chrystal (1912). Wherever possible, Lectures and Essays has been referred to in this study rather than to the original periodical sources but in some instances a dual reference is given.

22 Simpson (1911) esp. vol.i, pp.306-403.

23 The most useful of the obituary tributes have been those of Tait (1894) in Nature, W. R. Nicoll (1894) in the British Weekly and McLean (1894) in the Expository Times. Mention should also be made here of T.K. Cheyne’s laudatory section on Smith in Founders of Old Testament Criticism (1893) pp.212-225 – almost an advance obituary notice in itself.

24 Lilley (1920).

25 Carswell (1927) pp.54-120. The essay title, “Smith o’ Aiberdeen” is taken from R.L. Stevenson’s poem, “The Scotsman’s Return from Abroad” – RLS’s only literary reference to his erstwhile physics tutor. The two men were culturally and temperamentally far apart.

26 Cook (1951). Cook, who edited the third edition (1927) of The Religion of the Semites, adding a lengthy introduction and two hundred pages of his own additional notes, is possibly the least objective of those attempting an appraisal of Smith’s life and work.

27 Beidelman (1974).

28 Drummond and Bulloch (1978) pp.40-78.

29 Johnstone ed., 1995. Of especial note are the biographical summary in William Johnstone’s Introduction, Judith Shiel’s short but useful analysis of the extant correspondence, Donald Withrington’s account of Smith’s early education and John Morrison’s description of the social and artistic circle in which he moved during his professorial days at Aberdeen Free College.

30 Bediako (1997).

31 In Add. Mss 7449. All correspondence to and from Smith is cited simply by the specific reference number given to each letter within that collection. Some of the letters exist only as typed transcripts, with an occasional pencilled comment by Black.

32 Those memoirs are in CUL Add. Mss 7476, to which reference is always made in the footnotes.