Hume to Adam Smith.
"Edinburgh, 8th Feb. 1776.
"Dear Smith,—I am as lazy a correspondent as you, yet my anxiety about you makes me write. By all accounts your book has been printed long ago: yet it has never yet been so much as advertised. What is the reason? If you wait till the fate of America be decided, you may wait long.
"By all accounts, you intend to settle with us this spring: yet we hear no more of it: What is the reason? Your chamber in my house is always unoccupied. I am always at home. I expect you to land here.
"I have been, am, and shall be probably in an indifferent state of health. I weighed myself t' other day, and find I have fallen five complete stones. If you delay much longer I shall probably disappear altogether.
"The Duke of Buccleuch tells me that you are very zealous in American affairs. My notion is
that the matter is not so important as is commonly imagined. If I be mistaken, I shall probably correct my error when I see you, or read you. Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our manufactures. Should London fall as much in its size as I have done, it will be the better. It is nothing but a hulk of bad and unclean humours. Yours," &c.[484:1]
It is not perhaps uncharitable to suppose, that the following eulogium would have been more warm, had the person it was addressed to not been one of "the barbarians who inhabit the banks of the Thames."
Hume to Gibbon.
Edinburgh, 18th March, 1776.