Early in April, Hume, who was in London, received some copies, and wrote to thank Smith “for the agreeable present.” Always zealous in the service of friendship and Scottish literature, he employed all the wiles of diplomacy to promote the success of the book. “Wedderburn and I,” he writes, “made presents of our copies to such of our acquaintances as we thought good judges and proper to spread the reputation of the book. I sent one to the Duke of Argyle, and Lord Lyttelton, Horace Walpole, Soame Jenyns, and Bourke, an English gentleman who wrote lately a very pretty treatise on the Sublime. Millar (the publisher) desired my permission to send one in your name to Dr. Warburton.” Hume had delayed writing till he could tell how the book had been received and “could prognosticate with some probability whether it should be finally damned to oblivion, or should be registered in the Temple of Immortality.” Though it has only been out for a few weeks, he thinks he can now foretell its fate. But instead of gratifying an author’s impatience, Hume pretends to have been interrupted by an impertinent visitor, and digresses upon vacancies in the Scottish Universities, upon a new edition of Ferguson’s _Treatise on Refinement_, on Wilkie’s _Epigoniad_, and Lord Kames’s _Law Tracts_. At last he seems to be coming to the point:— “But to return to your book and its success in this town. I must tell you—— “A plague to interruptions!—I ordered myself to be denied, and yet here is one that has broken in upon me again.” The second visitor was a man of letters, and Hume goes off on a new scent. He advises Smith to read Helvetius’s new book _De L’Esprit_, and adds, “Voltaire has lately published a small work called _Candide ou L’Optimisme_. I shall give you a detail of it.” At last the badinage comes to an end with a warning that popularity is no test of merit. A wise man should rather be disquieted than elated by the approbation of the multitude:—