I there introduce a sceptic who is
indeed refuted and at last gives up the argument; nay, confesses that
he was only amusing himself by all his cavils, yet before he is
silenced he advances several topics which will give umbrage and will
be deemed for bold and free as well as much out of the common road. As
soon as I arrive at Edinburgh I intend to print a small edition of
500, of which I may give away about 100 in presents, and shall make
you the property of the whole, provided you have no scruple, in your
present situation, of being the editor. It is not necessary you should
prefix any name to the Title-page. I seriously declare that after Mr.
Miller and you and Mr. Cadell have publicly avowed your publication of
the _Inquiry concerning Human Understanding_, I know no reason why you
should have the least scruple with regard to these _Dialogues_. They
will be much less obnoxious to the Law and not more exposed to popular
clamour. Whatever your resolution be, I beg you would keep an entire
silence on this subject. If I leave them to you by will, your
executing the desire of a dead friend will render the publication
still more excusable. Mallet never suffered anything by being the
editor of Bolingbroke's works."[257]

Strahan agreed to undertake this duty, and Hume on the 12th of June
added a codicil to his will making Strahan his literary executor and
entire master of all his manuscripts. Hume, however, got rapidly worse
in health, so that he never printed the small edition he spoke of, and
feeling his end to be near, he added a fresh codicil to his will on
the 7th of August, desiring Strahan to publish the _Dialogues_ within
two years, and adding that if they were not published in two years and
a half the property should return to his nephew (afterwards Baron of
Exchequer), "whose duty," he says, "in publishing them, as the last
request of his uncle, must be approved of by all the world."[258]

Hume had meanwhile on the 4th of July 1776 gathered his group of more
intimate friends about him to eat together a last farewell dinner
before he made the great departure. Smith was present at this touching
and unusual reunion, and may possibly have remained some days
thereafter, for he speaks in a letter in the following month of having
had several conversations with Hume lately, among them being that
which he afterwards published in his letter to Strahan. But he was in
Kirkcaldy again in the beginning of August, and received