Smith promised Hume a visit about Christmas 1771, but the visit was postponed in consequence of the illness of Hume’s sister, and on the 28th of January he received the following letter, in reply apparently to a request for the address of the Comtesse de Boufflers in Paris:—­

     EDINBURGH, 28th January 1772.

DEAR SMITH—­I should certainly before this time have challenged the Performance of your Promise of being with me about Christmas had it not been for the misfortunes of my family.  Last month my sister fell dangerously ill of a fever, and though the fever be now gone, she is still so weak and low, and recovers so slowly, that I was afraid it would be but a melancholy house to invite you to.  However, I expect that time will reinstate her in her former health, in which case I shall look for your company.  I shall not take any excuse from your own state of health, which I suppose only a subterfuge invented by indolence and love of solitude.  Indeed, my dear Smith, if you continue to hearken to complaints of this nature, you will cut yourself out entirely from human society, to the great loss of both parties.

     The Lady’s Direction is M^e la Comtesse de B., Douaniere au
     Temple.  She has a daughter-in-law, which makes it requisite
     to distinguish her.—­Yours sincerely,

     DAVID HUME.

P.S.—­I have not yet read Orlando Inamorato.  I am now in a course of reading the Italian historians, and am confirmed in my former opinion that that language has not produced one author who knew how to write elegant correct prose though it contains several excellent poets.  You say nothing to me of your own work.[215]

Smith seems to have perhaps sent him Orlando Inamorato, or at any rate to have been previously in communication, either by letter or conversation, on the subject, for the Italian poets were favourite reading of his.  But a more important point in the letter is the indication it affords that Smith’s labours and solitude were beginning to tell on the state of his health.  Indeed, poor health had now become one of the chief causes of his delay in finishing his work, and it continued to go from bad to worse.  He writes his friend Pulteney in September that his book would have been ready for the press by the first of that winter if it were not for the interruptions caused by bad health, “arising,” he says, “from want of amusement and from thinking too much upon one thing,” together with other interruptions of an equally anxious nature, occasioned by his endeavours to extricate some of his personal friends from the difficulties in which they were involved by the commercial crisis of that time.

     KIRKALDY, 5th September 1772.