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
this national reflection.

All your friends here are in deep 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.[245]

On the same day as Hume wrote this letter from Edinburgh, Gibbon wrote
from London to Adam Ferguson and said among other things, "What an
excellent work is that with which our common friend Mr. Adam Smith has
enriched the public! An extensive science in a single book, and the
most profound ideas expressed in the most perspicuous language. He
proposes visiting you very soon, and I find he means to exert his most
strenuous endeavours to persuade Mr. Hume to return with him to town.
I am sorry to hear that the health and spirits of that truly great man
are in a less favourable state than his friends could wish, and I am
sure you will join your efforts in convincing him of the benefits of
exercise, dissipation, and change of air."

Some of Smith's personal friends seem to have entertained the common
prejudice that a good work on commerce could not be reasonably
expected from a man who had never been engaged in any branch of
practical business, and seemed in outward air and appearance so ill
fitted to succeed in such a line of business if he had engaged in it.
One of these was Sir John Pringle, President of the Royal Society, and
formerly, like Smith himself, Professor of Moral Philosophy at a
Scotch university. When the _Wealth of Nations_ appeared Sir John
Pringle remarked to Boswell that Smith, having never been in trade,
could not be expected to write well on that subject any more than a
lawyer upon physic, and Boswell repeated the remark to Johnson, who at
once, however, sent it to the winds. "He is mistaken, sir," said the
Doctor; "a man who has never been engaged in trade himself may
undoubtedly write well upon trade, and there is nothing that requires
more to be illustrated by philosophy than does trade. As to mere
wealth--that is to say, money--it is clear that one nation or one
individual cannot increase its s