APPENDIX. 



129 



ters ferved only to amufe his leifure, and to animate his conver- Account of 



. . . . Dr Smith. 



fation. The infirmities of age, of which he very early began 

 to feel the approaches, reminded him at laft, when it was too 

 late, of what he yet owed to the public, and to his own fame. 

 The principal materials of the works which he had announced, 

 had been long ago collected ; and little probably was wanting, 

 but a few years of health and retirement, to bellow on them 

 that fyftematical arrangement in which he delighted ; and the 

 ornaments of that flowing, and apparently artlefs ftyle, which 

 he had ftudioufly cultivated, but which, after all his experience 

 in compofition, he adjufted, with extreme difficulty, to his 

 own tafte *. 



The death of his mother in 1784, which was followed by 

 that of Mifs Douglas in 1788, contributed, it is probable, to 

 fruftrate thefe projects. They had been the objects of his af- 

 fection for more than fixty years ; and in their fociety he had 

 enjoyed, from his infancy, all that he ever knew of the endear- 

 ments of a family. He was now alone, and helplefs ; and, 

 though he bore his lofs with equanimity, and regained appa- 

 rently his former cheerfulnefs, yet his health and ftrength gra- 

 dually declined till the period of his death, which happened in- 

 jury 1790, about two years after that of his coufin, and fix af- 

 ter that of his mother. His laft illnefs, which arofe from a 



Vol. III. (R) chronic 



* Mr Smith obferved to me, not long before his death, that after all his practice 

 in writing, he compofed as flowly, and with as great difficulty, as at firft. He 

 added, at the fame time, that Mr Hume had acquired fo great a facility in this re- 

 fpect, that the laft volumes of his Hiftory were printed from his original copy, 

 with a few marginal corrections, 



It may gratify the curiofity of fome readers to know, that when Mr Smith was 

 employed in co rpofition, he generally walked up and down his apartment, dicta- 

 ting to a fecretary. All Mr Hume's works (I have been allured) were written 

 with his own hand. A critical reader may, I think, perceive in the diiferent ftyles - 

 of thefe two claffical writers, the effects of their different modes of ftudy, 



