Smith’s addition to Hume’s autobiography took the form of a letter to Strahan giving an account of Hume’s last illness, concluding with the words: “Upon the whole, I have always considered him both in his lifetime and since his death as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.” This warm-hearted and eloquent, but surely extravagant eulogy of the “virtuous heathen,” created precisely the kind of popular clamour that Smith had been so anxious to avoid. Strahan liked the addition exceedingly; but as this and the autobiography together were too short to make even a tiny volume, he wrote back, good publisher that he was:— “I have been advised by some very good judges to annex some of his letters to me on political subjects. What think you of this? I will do nothing without your advice and approbation, nor would I for the world publish any letter of his but such as in your opinion would do him honour. Mr. Gibbon thinks such as I have shown him would have that tendency. Now if you approve of this in any manner, you may perhaps add partly to the collection from your own cabinet and those of Mr. John Home, Dr. Robertson, and others of your mutual friends which you may pick up before you return hither. But if you wholly disapprove of this scheme, say nothing of it, here let it drop, for without your concurrence I will not publish a single word of it.” A decisive reply came at once from Kirkcaldy. It gives a peremptory judgment—quite against the drift of modern opinion—upon what will always be a case for the casuist:—