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 suffered 

 very little pain from my disorder ; and what is more strange, 

 have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never 

 suffered a moment's abatement of spirits ; insomuch 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 additional 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 speaking 

 of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my senti- 

 ments) ; 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 of great 

 moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary 



