You are too good in thinking any trifles that concern me are so much worth of your attention, but I give you entire liberty to make what additions you please to the account of my life.

I go very fast to decline, and last night had a small fever, wh.  I hoped might put a quicker period to this tedious illness, but unluckily it has in a great measure gone off.  I cannot submit to your coming over here on my account, as it is possible for me to see you so small a portion of the day, but Dr. Black can better inform you concerning the degree of strength which may from time to time remain with me.—­Adieu, my dearest friend,

     DAVID HUME.

     P.S.—­It was a strange blunder to send yr. letter by the
     carrier.[261]

These were the last words of this long and memorable friendship.  Two days after they were written Hume passed peacefully away, and his bones were laid in the new cemetery on the Calton Crags, and covered a little later, according to his own express provision, with that great round tower, designed by Robert Adam, which Smith once pointed out to the Earl of Dunmore as they were walking together down the North Bridge, and said, “I don’t like that monument; it is the greatest piece of vanity I ever saw in my friend Hume.”

Smith was no doubt at the funeral, and seems to have been present when the will was read, and to have had some conversation about it with Hume’s elder brother, John Home of Ninewells,[262] for on the 31st of August he writes from Dalkeith House, where he had gone on a visit to his old pupil, discharging Ninewells of any obligation to pay the legacy of L200 which he had been left by Hume in consideration of acting as his literary executor, and which had not been revoked in the codicil superseding him by Strahan.  This legacy Smith felt that he could not in the circumstances honourably accept, and he consequently lost no time in forwarding to Ninewells the following letter:—­

     DALKEITH HOUSE, 31st August 1776.

DEAR SIR—­As the Duke proposes to stay here till Thursday next I may not have an opportunity of seeing you before yr. return to Ninewells.  I therefore take the opportunity of discharging you and all others concerned of the Legacy which you was so good as to think might upon a certain event become due to me by your Brother’s will, but which I think could upon no event become so, viz. the legacy of two hundred pounds sterling.  I hereby therefore discharge it for ever, and least this discharge should be lost I shall be careful to mention it in a note at the bottom of my will.  I shall be glad to hear that you have received this letter, and hope you will believe me to be, both on yr.  Brother’s account and your own, with great truth, most affectionately yours,

     ADAM SMITH.

     P.S.—­I do not hereby mean to discharge the other Legacy,
     viz. that of a copy of his works.[263]