The ink of those letters was scarcely dry before Hume’s heart softened again towards his Dialogues, and in order to make more sure of their eventual publication than he could feel while they were entrusted to Smith’s hands, he wrote Strahan from Bath on the 8th of June asking if he would agree to act as literary executor and undertake the editing and publishing of the work.  In this letter he says:  “I have hitherto forborne to publish it because I was of late desirous to live quietly and keep remote from all clamour, for though it be not more exceptionable than some things I had formerly published, yet you know some of them were thought exceptionable, and in prudence perhaps I ought to have suppressed them.  I there introduce a sceptic who is indeed refuted and at last gives up the argument; nay, confesses that he was only amusing himself by all his cavils, yet before he is silenced he advances several topics which will give umbrage and will be deemed for bold and free as well as much out of the common road.  As soon as I arrive at Edinburgh I intend to print a small edition of 500, of which I may give away about 100 in presents, and shall make you the property of the whole, provided you have no scruple, in your present situation, of being the editor.  It is not necessary you should prefix any name to the Title-page.  I seriously declare that after Mr. Miller and you and Mr. Cadell have publicly avowed your publication of the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, I know no reason why you should have the least scruple with regard to these Dialogues.  They will be much less obnoxious to the Law and not more exposed to popular clamour.  Whatever your resolution be, I beg you would keep an entire silence on this subject.  If I leave them to you by will, your executing the desire of a dead friend will render the publication still more excusable.  Mallet never suffered anything by being the editor of Bolingbroke’s works."[257]

Strahan agreed to undertake this duty, and Hume on the 12th of June added a codicil to his will making Strahan his literary executor and entire master of all his manuscripts.  Hume, however, got rapidly worse in health, so that he never printed the small edition he spoke of, and feeling his end to be near, he added a fresh codicil to his will on the 7th of August, desiring Strahan to publish the Dialogues within two years, and adding that if they were not published in two years and a half the property should return to his nephew (afterwards Baron of Exchequer), “whose duty,” he says, “in publishing them, as the last request of his uncle, must be approved of by all the world."[258]