Note 517:2 — Chapter XVII · (continued 2)

In a little book, called "Supplement to the Life of David Hume, Esq." there is the following curious statement.

"The anxious attention with which the public viewed every circumstance respecting Mr. Hume's illness was not terminated even by his death. From the busy curiosity of the mob, one would have presumed them to entertain notions that the ashes of Mr. Hume were to have been the cause or the object of miraculous exertion. As the physicians of London and Edinburgh were divided about the seat of his disorder, those of the city where he died proposed that his body should be opened; but this his brother, who was also his executor, agreeably to the orders of the deceased, would not permit. It is hardly to be credited that the grave-diggers, digging with pick-axes Mr. Hume's grave, should have attracted the gaping curiosity of the multitude; that, notwithstanding a heavy rain which fell during the interment, multitudes of all ranks gazed on the funeral procession, as if they had expected the hearse to have been consumed in livid flames, or encircled with a ray of glory; that people in a sphere much above the rabble would have sent to the sexton for the keys of the burying-ground, and paid him to have access to visit the grave. And that on a Sunday evening, (the gates of the burying-ground being opened for another funeral,) the company from a public walk in the neighbourhood flocked in such crowds to Mr. Hume's grave, that his brother actually became apprehensive upon the unusual concourse, and ordered the grave to be railed in with all expedition."