him delay it, it wd. be a clause of this kind, wh. wd. give him an honourable pretence for doing so.  It would then be said I had published, for the sake of an emolument, not from respect to the memory of my friend, what even a printer, for the sake of the same emolument, had not published.  That Strahan is sufficiently jealous you will see by the enclosed letter, wh.  I will beg the favour of you to return to me, but by the Post, and not by the carrier.

If you will give me leave I will add a few lines to yr. account of your own life, giving some account in my own name of your behaviour in this illness, if, contrary to my own hopes, it should prove your last.  Some conversations we had lately together, particularly that concerning your want of an excuse to make to Charon, the excuse you at last thought of, and the very bad reception wh.  Charon was likely to give it, would, I imagine, make no disagreeable part of the history.  You have in a declining state of health, under an exhausting disease, for more than two years together now looked at the approach of death with a steady cheerfulness such as very few men have been able to maintain for a few hours, tho’ otherwise in the most perfect Health.

I shall likewise, if you give me leave, correct the sheets of the new edition of your works, and shall take care that it shall be published exactly according to your last corrections.  As I shall be at London this winter, it will cost me very little trouble.

All this I have written upon the supposition that the event of yr. disease should prove different from what I still hope it may do.  For your spirits are so good, the spirit of life is still so very strong in you, and the progress of your disorder is so slow and gradual, that I still hope it may take a turn.  Even the cool and steady Dr. Black, by a letter I received from him last week, seems not to be averse to the same hopes.

I hope I need not repeat to you that I am ready to wait on you whenever you wish to see me.  Whenever you do so I hope you will not scruple to call on me.  I beg to be remembered in the kindest and most respectful manner to yr.  Brother, your sister, your nephew, and all other friends.—­I ever am, my dearest friend, most affectionately yours,

     ADAM SMITH.[260]

Hume answered this letter next day.

     EDINBURGH, 23rd August 1776.

     MY DEAREST FRIEND—­I am obliged to make use of my nephew’s
     hand in writing to you, as I do not rise to-day.

There is no man in whom I have a greater confidence than Mr. Strahan, yet I have left the property of that manuscript to my nephew David, in case by any accident it should not be published within three years after my decease.  The only accident I could foresee was one to Mr. Strahan’s life, and without this clause my nephew would have had no right to publish it.  Be so good