lished in the author's lifetime, and it
has been many times republished in the century that has elapsed since.
This is the letter just referred to:--

DEAR STRAHAN--I sent up to Mr. Millar four or five Posts ago
the same additions which I had formerly sent to you, with a
good many corrections and improvements which occurred to me
since. If there are any typographical errors remaining in
the last edition which had escaped me, I hope you will
correct them. In other respects I could wish it was printed
pretty exactly according to the copy which I delivered to
you. A man, says the Spanish proverb, had better be a
cuckold and know nothing of the matter, than not be a
cuckold and believe himself to be one. And in the same
manner, say I, an author had sometimes better be in the
wrong and believe himself in the right, than be in the right
and believe or even suspect himself to be in the wrong. To
desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections
you would wish me to make upon a sheet of paper and send it
to me, would, I fear, be giving you too much trouble. If,
however, you could induce yourself to take this trouble, you
would oblige me greatly; I know how much I shall be
benefitted, and I shall at the same time preserve the
pretious right of private judgment, for the sake of which
our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I
believe you to be much more infallible than the Pope, but as
I am a Protestant, my conscience makes me scruple to submit
to any unscriptural authority.

_Apropos_ to the Pope and the Pretender, have you read
Hook's Memoirs?[118] I have been ill these ten days,
otherwise I should have written to you sooner, but I sat up
the day before yesterday in my bed and read them thro' with
infinite satisfaction, tho' they are by no means well
written. The substance of what is in them I knew before,
tho' not in such detail. I am afraid they are published at
an unlucky time, and may throw a damp upon our militia.
Nothing, however, appears to me more excusable than the
disaffection of Scotland at that time. The Union was a
measure from which infinite good has been derived to this
country. The Prospect of that good, however, must then have
appeared very remote and very uncertain. The immediate
effect of it w