192 ADAM SMITH. 



lectures, we may well believe that he now, as his age 

 declined and his infirmities increased, shrunk from 

 performing the same office to the other portions of the 

 lectures, when the avocations of his public duty gave a 

 perpetual interruption to his studies. It is remarkable, 

 too, how little, with all his great practice, he ever 

 acquired the art of composition. He told Mr. Stewart 

 a short time before his death, that " after all his prac- 

 tice, he composed as slowly and with as great difficulty 

 as at first." Hence it naturally surprises us to learn 

 that he never wrote, but walking about the room, 

 dictated to an amanuensis, from which we must con- 

 clude that before he began, he had well considered the 

 language as well as the matter, and spoke to the writer, 

 as it were, a prepared speech.* 



He began to feel the approach of age at a somewhat 

 early period, notwithstanding the temperate, calm, and 

 equable life which he had ever had ; nor had he 

 reached three score when he was sensible, not that his 

 faculties, but that his bodily strength and spirits were 

 somewhat impaired. The domestic losses to which I 

 have adverted left him solitary and helpless ; and 

 though he bore them with an equal mind, as became 

 a great philosopher, his health gradually declined. 

 The immediate cause of his death, which happened in 

 July, 1790, was a chronic obstruction in the bowels, 

 under which he lingered for a considerable time, and 

 suffered great pain ; but he bore it with perfect resig- 

 nation. When he left Edinburgh in 1773, on a journey 

 to London, the object of which has not been explained, 

 but which gave him the expectation of a long absence 

 from Scotland, he wrote a letter to Mr. Hume, intrust- 



* Mr. Stewart adds, that Dr. Smith mentioned Mr. Plume's facility of 

 writing as a contrast to his own, stating " that the last vols of his History 

 were printed from the original copy, with a few marginal corrections." I 

 have shown in his life, that this could not have been the case ; for I have 

 proved, both from Mr. Hume's MSS., and from his own account of his 

 difficulty in writing, that Dr. Smith's impression was erroneous. 



