ds came to see him, and take leave of him; and
on his way home he could not forbear writing him a letter, bidding him
once more an eternal adieu, and applying to him, as to a dying man,
the beautiful French verses in which the Abbe Chaulieu, in expectation
of his own death, laments his approaching separation from his friend
the Marquis de la Fare. Mr. Hume's magnanimity and firmness were
such, that his most affectionate friends knew that they hazarded
nothing in talking or writing to him as to a dying man, and that, so
far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and
flattered by it. I happened to come into his room while he was
reading this letter, which he had just received, and which he
immediately showed me. I told him, that though I was sensible how
very much he was weakened, and that appearances were in many respects
very bad, yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of life
seemed still to be so very strong in him, that I could not help
entertaining some faint hopes. He answered, "Your hopes are
groundless. An habitual diarrhoea of more than a year's standing
would be a very bad disease at any age: at my age it is a mortal one.
When I lie down in the evening I feel myself weaker than when I rose
in the morning, and when I rise in the morning weaker than when I lay
down in the evening. I am sensible, besides, that some of my vital
parts are affected, so that I must soon die." "Well," said I, "if it
must be so, you have at least the satisfaction of leaving all your
friends, your brother's family in particular, in great prosperity."
He said that he felt that satisfaction so sensibly, that when he was
reading, a few days before, Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, among all
the excuses which are alleged to Charon for not entering readily into
his boat, he could not find one that fitted him; he had no house to
finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom
he wished to revenge himself. "I could not well imagine," said he,
"what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a little
delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to
do, and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in
a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them: I
therefore have all reason to die contented." He then diverted himself
with inventing several jocular excuses, which he supposed he might
make to Charon, and with imagining th