How One Student Spent £100

George Smeaton, one of Scotland's greatest 19th century ministers and Biblical scholars, went to Edinburgh University in 1829 as a 15 year-old. It was an adjustment for him, according to Thomas Smith (who was with him on that first day, and later as a professorial colleague, and still later preached Smeaton's funeral sermon), but Smeaton soon overcame the disadvantages of his earlier education and went on during his final year to win a prize of £100 given by Dr. Thomas Chalmers to the best student of his class. One wonders, how did he spend the money?

His son, Oliphant Smeaton, tells the story, which is recounted first by William Knight, Some Nineteenth Century Scotsmen (1903), pp. 108-109; and later by John W. Keddie, George Smeaton: Learned Theologian and Biblical Scholar (2007), p. 26.

Characteristically a "bibliophile," he at once laid the sum out in books, securing among other things a complete edition of Migne's "Patristic Library" in seventy folio volumes, a first edition of "Calvini Opera," a fine copy of "Poli Synopsis," the famous folio "Erasmus" in five volumes, and other treasures.

This laid the foundation of a library to which he continued to add until the time of his death, and which at that time numbered considerably over fifteen thousand volumes, and was as varied as it was choice. I had the privilege of presenting it, afterwards, to the New College, where it now remains.