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8vo, 173 x 102 mms., pp. 16, new boards and end-papers. A very good copy. Shortly after David Hume died 25 August 1776, Smith described Hume in a letter to William Strahan, the publisher, that "Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit." This assessment, published in 1777, in an edition of Hume's My Own Life, not only led to further attacks on Hume but on the blameless and cautious Smith, who found himself mired in obloquy for his friendship, not unlike a certain controversy respecting a university building in Edinburgh no longer name The David Hume Tower. George Horne (1730 - 1792), in 1777, issued his anonymous Letter to Dr. Adam Smith LL.D … by one of the People called Christians, a rather vicious, though sometimes amusing attack on both Smith and Hume, with Horne asserting that Hume was a man "possessed with an incurable antipathy to all that is called RELIGION." Given that Hume had written to Heny Home (later Lord Kames, 1696 - 1782), in in June, 1747, confiding that "the Church is my Aversion," there is possibly a very small element of truth in Horne's assertion. Seller Inventory # 9882
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