picurus leaving as a legacy to his friend and
patron the children of his Metrodorus, the excellent Cullen."[368]

When it became evident that the sickness was to prove mortal, Smith's
old friend Adam Ferguson, who had been apparently estranged from him
for some time, immediately forgot their coolness, whatever it was
about, and came and waited on him with the old affection. "Your friend
Smith," writes Ferguson on 31st July 1790, announcing the death to Sir
John Macpherson, Warren Hastings' successor as Governor-General of
India--"your old friend Smith is no more. We knew he was dying for
some months, and though matters, as you know, were a little awkward
when he was in health, upon that appearance I turned my face that way
and went to him without further consideration, and continued my
attentions to the last."[369]

Dr. Carlyle mentions that the harmony of the famous Edinburgh literary
circle of last century was often ruffled by little tifts, which he and
John Home were generally called in to compose, and that the usual
source of the trouble was Ferguson's "great jealousy of rivals," and
especially of his three more distinguished friends, Hume, Smith, and
Robertson. But it would not be right to ascribe the fault to Ferguson
merely on that account, for Carlyle hints that Smith too had "a little
jealousy in his nature," although he admits him to have been a man of
"unbounded benevolence." But whatever it was that had come between
them, it is pleasant to find Ferguson dismissing it so unreservedly,
and forgetting his own infirmities too--for he had been long since
hopelessly paralysed, and went about, Cockburn tells us, buried in
furs "like a philosopher from Lapland"--in order to cheer the last
days of the friend of his youth.

When Smith felt his end to be approaching he evinced great anxiety to
have all his papers destroyed except the few which he judged to be in
a sufficiently finished state to deserve publication, and being
apparently too feeble to undertake the task himself, he repeatedly
begged his friends Black and Hutton to destroy them for him. A third
friend, Mr. Riddell, was present on one of the occasions when this
request was made, and mentions that Smith expressed regret that "he
had done so little." "But I meant," he said, "to have done more, and
there are materials in my papers of which I could have made a great
deal, but that is now out of the question."[370] Black and Hutton
always put off complying w