“I am sensible that many of Mr. Hume’s letters would do him great honour, and that you would publish none but such as would. But what in this case ought principally to be considered is the will of the Dead. Mr. Hume’s constant injunction was to burn all his Papers except the _Dialogues_ and the account of his own life. This injunction was even inserted in the body of his will. I know he always disliked the thought of his letters ever being published. He had been in 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.” The nervous objection felt by Hume and Smith to the publication of correspondence or of any manuscript not carefully considered by the writer, and intended by him for publication, may be overstrained; but perhaps this generation errs as much in its anxiety to penetrate the privacy of the dead as they did in wishing to destroy everything that was incomplete, or too easy, intimate, and negligent—as they thought—for the eye of a critical posterity.