116 ADAM SMITH. 



science, or only gave his attention to them, as matters of 

 amusement, and as food for conversation. He had, 

 indeed, in the two portions of his lectures of which 

 nothing had been published, the rich materials of works 

 in the very highest degree interesting and important. 

 But when we reflect that ten years had been required, 

 and those years passed in seclusion, to systematize, to 

 arrange, and to compose the work into which were 

 moulded the economical part of his 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 prac- 

 tice, he ever acquired the art of composition. He told 

 Mr. Stewart a short time before his death, that " after all 

 his practice, he composed as slowly and with as great diffi- 

 culty 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 conclude 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 



* Mr. Stewart adds, that Dr. Smith mentioned Mr. Hume's faci- 

 lity 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 mar- 

 ginal corrections." I have shown in his life, that this could not have 

 been the case; for I have proved, both from Mr. Hume's own MSS., 

 and from his account of his difficulty in writing, that Dr. Smith's 

 impression was erroneous. 



