CHAPTER XXXII
LAST DAYS
The new edition of the Theory was the last work Smith published. A French newspaper, the Moniteur Universelle of Paris, announced on 11th March 1790 that a critical examination of Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois was about to appear from the pen of the celebrated author of the Wealth of Nations, and ventured to predict that the work would make an epoch in the history of politics and of philosophy. That at least, it added, is the judgment of well-informed people who have seen parts of it, of which they speak with an enthusiasm of the happiest augury. But notwithstanding this last statement the announcement was not made on any good authority. Smith may probably enough have dealt with Montesquieu as he dealt with many other topics in the papers he had prepared towards his projected work on government, but there is no evidence that he ever intended to publish a separate work on that remarkable writer, and before March 1790 his strength seems to have been much wasted. The Earl of Buchan, who had some time before gone to live in the country, was in town in February, and paid a visit to his old professor and friend. On taking leave of him the Earl said, "My dear Doctor, I hope to see you oftener when I come to town next February," but Smith squeezed his lordship's hand and replied, "My dear Lord Buchan,[365] I may be alive then and perhaps half a dozen Februaries, but you never will see your old friend any more. I find that the machine is breaking down, so that I shall be little better than a mummy"—with a by-thought possibly to the mummies of Toulouse. "I found a great inclination," adds the Earl, "to visit the Doctor in his last illness, but the mummy stared me in the face and I was intimidated."[366]
During the spring months Smith got worse and weaker, and though he seemed to rally somewhat at the first approach of the warm weather, he at length sank again in June, and his condition seemed to his friends to be already hopeless. Long and painful as his illness was, he bore it throughout not with patience merely but with a serene and even cheerful resignation. On the 21st of June Henry Mackenzie wrote his brother-in-law, Sir J. Grant, that Edinburgh had just lost its finest woman, and in a few weeks it would in all probability lose its greatest man. The finest woman was the beautiful Miss Burnet of Monboddo, whom Burns called "the most heavenly of all God's works," and the greatest man was Adam Smith. "He is now," says Mackenzie, "past all hopes of recovery, with which about three weeks ago we had flattered ourselves."
A week later Smellie, the printer, wrote Smith's young friend, Patrick Clason, in London: "Poor Smith! we must soon lose him, and the moment in which he departs will give a heart-pang to thousands. Mr. Smith's spirits are flat, and I am afraid the exertions he sometimes makes to please his friends do him no good. His intellect as well as his senses are clear and distinct. He wishes to be cheerful, but nature is omnipotent. His body is extremely emaciated, and his stomach cannot admit of sufficient nourishment; but, like a man, he is perfectly patient and resigned."[367]
In all his own weakness he was still thoughtful of the care of his friends, and one of his last acts was to commend to the good offices of the Duke of Buccleugh the children of his old friend and physician, Cullen, who died only a few months before himself. "In many respects," says Lord Buchan, "Adam Smith was a chaste disciple of Epicurus as that philosopher is properly understood, and Smith's last act resembled that of Epicurus leaving as a legacy to his friend and patron the children of his Metrodorus, the excellent Cullen."[368]
When it became evident that the sickness was to prove mortal, Smith's old friend Adam Ferguson, who had been apparently estranged from him for some time, immediately forgot their coolness, whatever it was about, and came and waited on him with the old affection. "Your friend Smith," writes Ferguson on 31st July 1790, announcing the death to Sir John Macpherson, Warren Hastings' successor as Governor-General of India—"your old friend Smith is no more. We knew he was dying for some months, and though matters, as you know, were a little awkward when he was in health, upon that appearance I turned my face that way and went to him without further consideration, and continued my attentions to the last."[369]
Dr. Carlyle mentions that the harmony of the famous Edinburgh literary circle of last century was often ruffled by little tifts, which he and John Home were generally called in to compose, and that the usual source of the trouble was Ferguson's "great jealousy of rivals," and especially of his three more distinguished friends, Hume, Smith, and Robertson. But it would not be right to ascribe the fault to Ferguson merely on that account, for Carlyle hints that Smith too had "a little jealousy in his nature," although he admits him to have been a man of "unbounded benevolence." But whatever it was that had come between them, it is pleasant to find Ferguson dismissing it so unreservedly, and forgetting his own infirmities too—for he had been long since hopelessly paralysed, and went about, Cockburn tells us, buried in furs "like a philosopher from Lapland"—in order to cheer the last days of the friend of his youth.
When Smith felt his end to be approaching he evinced great anxiety to have all his papers destroyed except the few which he judged to be in a sufficiently finished state to deserve publication, and being apparently too feeble to undertake the task himself, he repeatedly begged his friends Black and Hutton to destroy them for him. A third friend, Mr. Riddell, was present on one of the occasions when this request was made, and mentions that Smith expressed regret that "he had done so little." "But I meant," he said, "to have done more, and there are materials in my papers of which I could have made a great deal, but that is now out of the question."[370] Black and Hutton always put off complying with Smith's entreaties in the hope of his recovering his health or perhaps changing his mind; but at length, a week before his death, he expressly sent for them, and asked them then and there to burn sixteen volumes of manuscript to which he directed them. This they did without knowing or asking what they contained. It will be remembered that seventeen years before, when he went up to London with the manuscript of the Wealth of Nations, he made Hume his literary executor, and left instructions with him to destroy all his loose papers and eighteen thin paper folio books "without any examination," and to spare nothing but his fragment on the history of astronomy. When the sixteen volumes of manuscript were burnt Smith's mind seemed to be greatly relieved. It appears to have been on a Sunday, and when his friends came, as they were accustomed to do, on the Sunday evening to supper—and they seem to have mustered strongly on this particular evening—he was able to receive them with something of his usual cheerfulness. He would even have stayed up and sat with them had they allowed him, but they pressed him not to do so, and he retired to bed about half-past nine. As he left the room he turned and said, "I love your company, gentlemen, but I believe I must leave you to go to another world." These are the words as reported by Henry Mackenzie, who was present, in giving Samuel Rogers an account of Smith's death during a visit he paid to London in the course of the following year.[371] But Hutton, in the account he gave Stewart of the incident, employs the slightly different form of expression, "I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." Possibly both sentences were used by Smith, for both are needed for the complete expression of the parting consolation he obviously meant to convey—that death is not a final separation, but only an adjournment of the meeting.