long and intimate correspondence with a relation of his
own who dyed a few years ago. When that gentleman's health
began to decline he was extremely anxious to get back his
letters, least the heir should think of publishing them.
They were accordingly returned, and burnt as soon as
returned. If a collection of Mr. Hume's letters besides was
to receive the public approbation, as yours certainly would,
the Curls of the times would immediately set about rummaging
the cabinets of all those who had ever received a scrap of
paper from him. Many things would be published not fit to
see the light, to the great mortification of all those who
wish well to his memory. Nothing has contributed so much to
sink the value of Swift's works as the undistinguished
publication of his letters; and be assured that your
publication, however select, would soon be followed by an
undistinguished one. I should therefore be sorry to see any
beginning given to the publication of his letters. His life
will not make a volume, but it will make a small pamphlet. I
shall certainly be in London by the tenth of January at
furthest. I have a little business at Edinburgh which may
detain me a few days about Christmas, otherwise I should be
with you by the new year. I have a great deal more to say to
you; but the post is just going. I shall write to Mr. Cadell
by next post.--I ever am, dear sir, most affectionately
yours,

ADAM SMITH.

KIRKALDY, _2nd December 1776_.[270]

When we consider Smith's concern about the clamour he expected to
arise from the _Dialogues_, and his entire unconcern about the clamour
he did not expect to arise from the letter to Strahan on Hume's last
illness, the actual event seems one of those teasing perversities
which drew from Lord Bolingbroke the exclamation, "What a world is
this, and how does fortune banter us!" The _Dialogues_ fell flat; the
world had apparently had its surfeit of theological controversy. A
contemporary German observer of things in England states that while
the book made something of a sensation in his own country, it excited
nothing of that sort here, and was already at the moment he wrote
(1785) entirely forgotten.[271]

The letter to Strahan, on the other hand, excited a long reverberation
of angry criticism. Smith had certainly in writing it no thought of
undermining the