As I mentioned in my previous post, my colleague and friend Alain Alcouffe and I are researching Adam Smith’s encounters in the Republic of Geneva during his grand tour with the 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. Among our discoveries is the fact that Smith and the young Duke had dinner with Lord and Lady Stanhope in Geneva on Christmas Day 1765! This particular revelation is important because previous biographers — beginning with Dugald Stewart and John Rae — have Smith returning to Paris in mid-December 1765 — i.e. in time to meet Rousseau and say farewell to Hume before their hasty departure from the City of Light on 4 January 1766.