sent to Holland or England, where it might be coined and sent back to France, for less than two per cent. Accordingly, Necker says, that the French king takes only two per cent of seignorage. But these and a hundred other points are fit only to be discussed in conversation; which, till you tell me the contrary, I still flatter myself with soon. I hope it will be soon; for I am in a very bad state of health, and cannot afford a long delay. I fancy you are acquainted with Mr. Gibbon. I like his performance extremely, and have ventured to tell him, that, had I not been personally acquainted with him, I should never have expected such an excellent work from the pen of an Englishman. It is lamentable to consider how much that nation has declined in literature during our time. I hope he did not take amiss the national reflection.
"All your friends here are in great grief at present, for the death of Baron Mure, which is an irreparable loss to our society. He was among the oldest and best friends I had in the world."[487:1]
In April, 1776, the disease of which Hume subsequently died, had made alarming progress. The little autobiographical sketch, called "my own Life," was finished on the eighteenth of that month; and he there speaks of the rise and progress of his disorder, and of his feelings under the expectation of a speedy termination of his life, in the following terms:—
In spring, 1775, I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a
moment's abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this latter period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I knew that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present.
It was probably early in the year, and before the disease had made such progress, as to make his friends in general anticipate its fatal conclusion, that Dr. Black wrote the following undated letter on the subject to Smith:—
"I write at present, chiefly to acquaint you with the state of your friend David Hume's health, which is so bad that I am quite melancholy upon it, and as I hear that you intend a visit to this country soon, I wish if possible to hasten your coming, that he may have the comfort of your company so much the sooner. He has been declining several years, and this in a slow and gradual manner, until about a twelvemonth ago, since which the progress of his disorder has been more rapid. One of his distresses has been a sensation of excessive heat, chiefly in the night time, and which was only external, for it occasioned no internal distress, or anxiety, or thirst."
Black then proceeds to describe with more minuteness, than would be either pleasing or instructive to unscientific readers, a series of symptoms from which he infers that the most serious part of his patient's disorder, is a hemorrhage in the upper part of the intestines.[488:1] He continues,—
"His mother, he says, had precisely the same constitution with himself, and died of this very disorder; which has made him give up any hopes of his getting the better of it." He concludes by saying,—
"Do not, however, say much on this subject to any one else; as he does not like to have it spoke of, and has been shy and slow in acquainting me fully with the state of his health."