Smith, ever yours,

DAVID HUME.[225]

While Pulteney was suggesting Smith's name for employment under the
East India Company, Baron Mure was trying to secure his services as
tutor to the Duke of Hamilton, and Lord Stanhope possibly offered him
the position of tutor to his lordship's ward, the young Earl of
Chesterfield. Baron Mure was one of the guardians of the young Duke of
Hamilton (the son of the beautiful Miss Gunning), and had in that
capacity had the chief responsibility in raising and carrying on the
great Douglas cause. He was a man of great sagacity and weight, whom
we have seen in communication with Hume and Oswald on economic
subjects; he had long been also on terms of personal intimacy with
Smith, and he seems to have been anxious in 1772 to send Smith abroad
with the Duke of Hamilton, as he had already been sent abroad with
the Duke of Buccleugh. Smith would appear to have been sounded on the
subject, and even to have given what was considered a favourable
reply, for Andrew Stuart, a fellow-guardian of the Duke along with
Mure, writes the latter acknowledging receipt of his letter
"intimating"--these are the words--"the practicability of having Mr.
Smith," but the Duke's mother (then Duchess of Argyle) and the Duke
himself preferred Dr. John Moore, the author of _Zelucco_, who was the
family medical attendant, and was indeed chosen because he could act
in that capacity to his very delicate young charge, though he was
strictly required to drop the "doctor," and was severely censured by
the Duchess for assisting at a surgical operation in Geneva, inasmuch
as if it got known that he was a medical man it would be a bar to
their reception in the best society.[226] Accordingly Mure was told
that it was "the united opinion of all concerned that matters go no
further with Mr. Smith."

The circumstance that so wise and practical a head as Baron Mure's
should have thought of Smith for this post is at least a proof that
the Buccleugh tutorship had been a success, and that Smith was not
considered by other men of the world who knew him well as being so
unfit for the situation of travelling tutor as some of his friends
thought him.

During this period of severe study in Kirkcaldy his fits of absence
might be expected to recur occasionally, and Dr. Charles Rogers
relates an anecdote of one of them, which may be repeated here, though
Dr. Rogers omits mentioning any authority for it; and stories of that
ki