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13.: From DAVID HUME - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith [1740]

Edition used:

Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, vol. VI of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


13.

From DAVID HUME

MS., in possession of Maggs Bros. (1932); HL i. 176.

Edinburgh, Jack’s Land,1 26 May 1753

My Dear Sir

I was very sorry to hear by Mr Leechman2 that you had been ill of late. I am afraid the Fatigues of your Class have exhausted you too much, and that you require more Leizure and Rest than you allow yourself.3 However, the good Season and the Vacation now approaches; and I hope you intend, both for Exercise and Relaxation, to take a Jaunt to this Place. I have many things to communicate to you. Were you not my Friend, you wou’d envy my robust Constitution. My Application has been and is continual; and yet I preserve entire Health. I am now beginning the Long Parliament; which, considering the great Number of Volumes I peruse, and my scrupulous method of composing, I regard as a very great Advance4 I think you shou’d settle in this Town during the Vacation; where there always is some good Company; and you know, that I can supply you with Books, as much as you please.

I beg to hear from you at your Leizure; and am

Your affectionate Friend and humble Servant

David Hume.

[1 ]Beyond the Netherbow and in the Canongate, near the Tolbooth. Hume removed from Riddle’s Land to the ‘very small’ house in Jack’s Land at Whitsunday 1753 and stayed nine years, mostly spent on writing his History of England.

[2 ]See Letter 3, n. 4. Hume probably knew Leechman from their time together at Edinburgh University.

[3 ]The college session extended from 10 Oct. to 10 June. From Monday to Friday Smith taught the Moral Philosophy public class of at most 90 students between 7.30 a.m. and 8.30 a.m. He then held at eleven an hour’s examination on the morning lecture for a third of his students. His private class of about 20 students met three times a week from noon until one. He was accessible to his students and diligent in preparing lectures. John Millar reported that his course consisted of four parts: National Theology, Ethics, Jurisprudence, and Political Economy. This and other information about Smith as a professor was presented by Dugald Stewart in his ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith’ (RSE Transactions, iii (1794), pt. 1. 55–137 (reissued with additions, Dugald Stewart, Biographical Memoirs of Smith, Robertson, and Reid, 1811, 3–152; Works of Smith, ed. Stewart (1811), v. 403–552; Works of Stewart, ed. Hamilton (1858), x. 5–98). See, also, Rae 51–7, and Scott 69–71); text in Glasgow edn. EPS.

[4 ]History of England (1754), i, ch. 10.