the prices discharged on the back.  You will compare with the books when they arrive.  Mr. Campbell will further them to London.  I should have wrote to you of this a fortnight ago, but my natural dilatoriness prevented me.—­I ever am, with the greatest esteem and regard, your most obliged and most obedient humble servant,

     ADAM SMITH.

     COLLEGE OF GLASGOW,
     17th September 1759.

The second edition of the Theory, which Hume was anticipating immediately in 1759, did not appear till 1761, and it contained none of the alterations or additions he expected; but the Dissertation on the Origin of Languages was for the first time published along with it.  The reason for the omission of the other additions is difficult to discover, for the author had not only prepared them, but gone the length of placing them in the printer’s hands in 1760, as appears from the following letter.  They did not appear either in the third edition in 1767, or the fourth in 1774, or the fifth in 1781; nor till the sixth, which was published, with considerable additions and corrections, immediately before the author’s death in 1790.  The earlier editions were published at 6s., and the 1790 edition at 12s.  This was the last edition published in the author’s lifetime, and it has been many times republished in the century that has elapsed since.  This is the letter just referred to:—­

DEAR STRAHAN—­I sent up to Mr. Millar four or five Posts ago the same additions which I had formerly sent to you, with a good many corrections and improvements which occurred to me since.  If there are any typographical errors remaining in the last edition which had escaped me, I hope you will correct them.  In other respects I could wish it was printed pretty exactly according to the copy which I delivered to you.  A man, says the Spanish proverb, had better be a cuckold and know nothing of the matter, than not be a cuckold and believe himself to be one.  And in the same manner, say I, an author had sometimes better be in the wrong and believe himself in the right, than be in the right and believe or even suspect himself to be in the wrong.  To desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you would wish me to make upon a sheet of paper and send it to me, would, I fear, be giving you too much trouble.  If, however, you could induce yourself to take this trouble, you would oblige me greatly; I know how much I shall be benefitted, and I shall at the same time preserve the pretious right of private judgment, for the sake of which our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender.  I believe you to be much more infallible than the Pope, but as I am a Protestant, my conscience makes me scruple to submit to any unscriptural authority.

Apropos to the Pope and the Pretender, have you read Hook’s Memoirs?[118] I have been ill these ten days, otherwise I should have written to you sooner, but I sat up the