Note 708 — Chapter V

‘Upon his return to England in the autumn of 1766, he went to reside with his mother at his native town of Kirkaldy, and remained there for ten years. All the attempts of his friends in Edinburgh to draw him thither were vain; and from a kind and lively letter of Mr. Hume upon the subject, complaining that, though within sight of him on the opposite side of the Frith of Forth, he could not have speech of him, it appears that no one was aware of the occupations in which those years were passed.’ Brougham's Life of Adam Smith, p. 189. Occasionally, however, he saw his literary friends. See Dugald Stewart's Biographical Memoirs, p. 73, Edinb. 1811, 4to.