Thorold Rogers published in the Academy, 28th February 1885, a letter of Smith to William Pulteney, written in 1772, from which he thought it probable that the work lay "unrevised and unaltered" in the author's desk for four years.
In point of style, the Anecdota is inferior to the Histories, and has the air of being unfinished, or at least unrevised.
The compilation of " geography books " by uninstructed writers led to the pernicious habit, which is not yet wholly overcome, of reducing the general or " physical " part to a few pages of concentrated information, and expanding the particular or " political " part by including unrevised travellers' stories and uncritical descriptions of the various countries of the world.
In 1862 the synod of the Popovshchina passed a circular letter making advances to the government with a view to a compromise, which was arranged on the basis of the Old Believers consenting to accept the ministrations of Orthodox priests on condition that they should use the unrevised books.