48 HUME ii 



A wise wish, indeed. Posterity respectfully 

 concurs therein; and subjects Hume's estimate of 

 England and things English to such modifications 

 as it would probably have undergone had the wish 

 been fulfilled. 



In 1775, Hume's health began to fail; and in 

 the spring of the following year, his disorder, 

 which appears to have been haemorrhage of the 

 bowels, attained such a height that he knew it 

 must be fatal. So he made his will, and wrote 

 " My Own Life," the conclusion of which is one of 

 the most cheerful, simple, and dignified leave- 

 takings of life and all its concerns, extant. 



" I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suf- 

 fered very little pain from my disorder ; and what is more 

 strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my per- 

 son, never suffered a moment's abatement of spirits; inso- 

 much that were I to name the period of my life which I 

 should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted 

 to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as 

 ever in study and the same gaiety in company ; I consider, 

 besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a 

 few years of infirmities : and though I see many symptoms 

 of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with ad- 

 ditional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to 

 enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than 

 I am at present. 



" To conclude historically with my own character, I am, 

 or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speak- 

 ing of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my 

 sentiments) ; I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of 

 command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, 

 capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and 



