that, although I thought your character a sincere one, it was not so; there was a particular feature omitted that we were still ignorant of, and that you would add it; like a fool I gave you the manuscript, and you thrust it into the fire, adding, 'Oh, what an idiot I had nearly proved myself to be, to leave such a document in the hands of a parcel of women!'"
"Villain!" said my mother, laughing, and shaking her head at him.
"Do you remember all this, my little woman?" said Hume to me.
"I was too young," said I, "to think of it at the time."
"How's this? have not you and I grown up together?"
I looked surprised.
"Yes," added he, "you have grown tall, and I have grown broad."[446:1]
It may give us some farther idea of the refined simplicity that made his conversation agreeable to intellectual and right thinking women, to observe the manner in which he was addressed in the following very lively letter from Lady Elliot Murray, the wife of his friend, Sir Gilbert.
Minto, 12th October, 1772.
I am resolved to take the reins of government into my own hands. I don't know what has made me such a humble subservient animal hitherto. I will dictate from this time forth. I will give the law, and insist on an implicit obedience to my superior wisdom; for am I not wiser than the wisest? did I not foretell what has come to pass, that Mons. De Guigne would not reach Edinburgh before the middle of this week? and did I not prove my judgment surpassing that best of historians, who is a mere pedler in understanding to me? Had he taken my advice, he need not have jumbled himself seventy long miles over mountains and plains in one day, and left a family who were happy in his company, and exchanged the cheering blaze of a good coal fire, for the dreary glimpses of a clouded moon. But, however, he had the pleasure of gratifying a sense which few people are much troubled with, a delicacy and