pride of literary fame, he recalled to his mind the venerable figure of the good La Roche and wished he had never doubted.”  Before publishing his story Mackenzie read it to Adam Smith, in order to be told whether anything should be omitted or altered as being out of keeping with Hume’s character, and so completely was Smith carried away by the verisimilitude that he not only said he found not a syllable to object to, but added that he was surprised he had never heard the anecdote before.  In his absence of mind he had forgotten for the moment that he had been asked to listen to the story as a work of fiction, and his answer was the best compliment Mackenzie could receive to his fidelity to the probabilities of character.[274]

FOOTNOTES: 

[255] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 492.

[256] Ibid., ii. 493.

[257] Hill’s Letters of Hume to Strahan, p. 330.

[258] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 494.

[259] Hume Correspondence, R.S.E.  Library.

[260] Hume Correspondence, R.S.E.  Library.

[261] Hume Correspondence, R.S.E.  Library.

[262] Hume’s brother always spelt his name with an o.

[263] Hume Correspondence, R.S.E.  Library.

[264] Ibid.

[265] Hume Correspondence, R.S.E.  Library.

[266] New York Evening Post, 30th April 1887.  Original in possession of Mr. Worthington C. Ford of Washington, U.S.A.  The first draft of this letter, in Smith’s handwriting but without the last paragraph and the signature, seems to have been preserved by him as a copy for reference, and having been sent by him with his other Hume letters to the historian’s nephew, is now in the Royal Society Library, Edinburgh.

[267] Hume Correspondence, R.S.E.  Library.

[268] New York Evening Post, 30th March 1887.  Original in possession of Mr. Worthington C. Ford of Washington, U.S.A.

[269] Hume Correspondence, R.S.E.  Library.

[270] Hill’s Letters of Hume, p. 351.

[271] Wendeborn, Zustand des Staats, etc., in Gross-britannien, ii. 365.

[272] Caldwell Papers, i. 41.

[273] Burton’s Hume, ii. 451.

[274] See Mackenzie’s “La Roche,” and Mackenzie’s Works of J. Home, i. 21.

CHAPTER XX

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