Dear Sir,—As I ran through your volume of history with a great deal of avidity and impatience, I cannot forbear discovering somewhat of the same impatience in returning you thanks for your agreeable present, and expressing the satisfaction which the performance has given me. Whether I consider the dignity of your style, the depth of your matter, or the extensiveness of your learning, I must regard the work as equally the object of esteem; and I own, that if I had not previously had the happiness of your personal acquaintance, such a performance, from an Englishman in our age, would have given me some surprise. You may smile at this sentiment; but as it seems to me that your countrymen, for almost a whole generation, have given themselves up to barbarous and absurd faction, and have totally neglected all polite letters, I no longer expected any valuable production ever to come from them. I know it will give you pleasure (as it did me,) to find that all the men of letters in this place concur in their admiration of your work, and in their anxious desire of your continuing it.
When I heard of your undertaking, (which was some time ago,) I own I was a little curious to see how you would
extricate yourself from the subject of your two last chapters. I think you have observed a very prudent temperament; but it was impossible to treat the subject so as not to give grounds of suspicion against you, and you may expect that a clamour will arise. This, if any thing, will retard your success with the public; for in every other respect your work is calculated to be popular. But, among many other marks of decline, the prevalence of superstition in England, prognosticates the fall of philosophy and decay of taste; and though nobody be more capable than you to revive them, you will probably find a struggle in your first advances.
I see you entertain a great doubt with regard to the authenticity of the poems of Ossian. You are certainly right in so doing. It is, indeed, strange, that any men of sense could have imagined it possible, that above twenty thousand verses, along with numberless historical facts, could have been preserved by oral tradition during fifty generations, by the rudest, perhaps, of all European nations; the most necessitous, the most turbulent, and the most unsettled. Where a supposition is so contrary to common sense, any positive evidence of it ought never to be regarded. Men run with great avidity to give their evidence in favour of what flatters their passions, and their national prejudices. You are, therefore, over and above indulgent to us in speaking of the matter with hesitation.
I must inform you, that we are all very anxious to hear that you have fully collected the materials for your second volume, and that you are even considerably advanced in the composition of it. I speak this more in the name of my friends than in my own; as I cannot expect to live so long as to see the publication of it. Your ensuing volume will be more delicate than the preceding, but I trust in your prudence for extricating you from the difficulties; and, in all events, you have courage to despise the clamour of bigots. I am, with regard, &c.[485:1]
At length appeared the long looked for work, in which the parent of the first elucidations of political
economy was to see his own offspring eclipsed; and to see it with pride. One must be familiar with the unenvious friendship which Hume ever bestowed, on the fellow countrymen who joined him in the noble path of philosophical inquiry, to appreciate the genuine satisfaction with which he thus hailed the appearance of "The Wealth of Nations."
Hume to Adam Smith.
"Edinburgh, 1st April, 1776.
"Euge! Belle! Dear Mr. Smith,—I am much pleased with your performance; and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much expectation, by yourself, by your friends, and by the public, that I trembled for its appearance, but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular. But it has depth, and solidity, and acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious facts, that it must at last take the public attention. It is probably much improved by your last abode in London. If you were here at my fireside, I should dispute some of your principles. I cannot think that the rent of farms makes any part of the price of the produce, but that the price is determined altogether by the quantity and the demand.[486:1] It appears to me impossible, that the King of France can take a seignorage of eight per cent upon the coinage. Nobody would bring bullion to the mint; it would be all