He was now a man of fame, and to enjoy it came up to London, where he resided for two years in the midst of the best society, political and literary, to be found in England. He was now to be a man of fortune as well as of fame; he was appointed a commissioner of the customs in Scotland. He returned to Edinburgh, and commenced the agreeable life of a man at once distinguished, and opulent to the full extent of his simple desires, in a society whose names are still regarded as the lights of Scotland. He lived hospitably, and entertained good society, but he wrote no more; he was growing old, and Lord Brougham evidently thinks that the duties of his office exhausted his spirits and occupied his time. But those duties always partook largely of the nature of a sinecure; and there is every reason to doubt whether they could have worn down a man of regular habits, and who had been trained to the routine of daily business by an apprenticeship of a quarter of a century. The greater probability is, that Smith felt that he had done enough for fame; that, knowing the world, he was unwilling to expose himself to the caprices of critical applause; and that he even felt how inadequate the early theories which found admirers in the lecture-room, might be to sustain a character already brought into full publicity by his own volumes. The fact is certain, that he produced nothing more. In July 1790, he died, at the age of sixty-seven. It was his custom to give a supper on the Sunday evening to a numerous circle of friends. How far this entertainment, which was more consistent with the latitude of his Paris recollections, was reconcilable with the decorums of Scotland, we cannot say. But on one evening, after having destroyed his manuscripts, finding himself not so well as usual, he retired to bed before supper, and as he went, said to his friends, "I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." He died in a very few days afterwards. Lord Brougham has obviously expended his chief labour on the life of this favourite philosopher, of whom, fifty years ago, every Scottish economist was a devoted pupil. Times are changed, yet this intelligent biographer has given a very ample and accurate, so far as we can judge, analysis of the _Enquiry_. But he would have greatly increased the obligations of the reader, by giving some portion of his treatise to the questions which modern artifice has devised, and modern infatuation has adopted.