DEAR SIR—­It always gives me great uneasiness whenever I am obliged to give an opinion contrary to the inclination of my friend.  I am sensible that many of Mr. Hume’s letters would do him great honour, and that you would publish none but such as would.  But what in this case ought principally to be considered is the will of the Dead.  Mr. Hume’s constant injunction was to burn all his Papers except the Dialogues and the account of his own life.  This injunction was even inserted in the body of his will.  I know he always disliked the thought of his letters ever being published.  He had been in long and intimate correspondence with a relation of his own who dyed a few years ago.  When that gentleman’s health began to decline he was extremely anxious to get back his letters, least the heir should think of publishing them.  They were accordingly returned, and burnt as soon as returned.  If a collection of Mr. Hume’s letters besides was to receive the public approbation, as yours certainly would, the Curls of the times would immediately set about rummaging the cabinets of all those who had ever received a scrap of paper from him.  Many things would be published not fit to see the light, to the great mortification of all those who wish well to his memory.  Nothing has contributed so much to sink the value of Swift’s works as the undistinguished publication of his letters; and be assured that your publication, however select, would soon be followed by an undistinguished one.  I should therefore be sorry to see any beginning given to the publication of his letters.  His life will not make a volume, but it will make a small pamphlet.  I shall certainly be in London by the tenth of January at furthest.  I have a little business at Edinburgh which may detain me a few days about Christmas, otherwise I should be with you by the new year.  I have a great deal more to say to you; but the post is just going.  I shall write to Mr. Cadell by next post.—­I ever am, dear sir, most affectionately yours,

     ADAM SMITH.

     KIRKALDY, 2nd December 1776.[270]

When we consider Smith’s concern about the clamour he expected to arise from the Dialogues, and his entire unconcern about the clamour he did not expect to arise from the letter to Strahan on Hume’s last illness, the actual event seems one of those teasing perversities which drew from Lord Bolingbroke the exclamation, “What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us!” The Dialogues fell flat; the world had apparently had its surfeit of theological controversy.  A contemporary German observer of things in England states that while the book made something of a sensation in his own country, it excited nothing of that sort here, and was already at the moment he wrote (1785) entirely forgotten.[271]