VOLUME XII.

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, EDINBURGH.

MDCCCLVI.

[The Proprietors of this Work give notice that they reserve the right of Translating it.] Hume, David, one of the most celebrated historians and philosophers of Great Britain, has already been twice noticed in the Preliminary Dissertations, where the principal doctrines of his metaphysics have been considered by Stewart, and those of his ethics by Mackintosh. This happily exempts the writer of the present article from touching on the same topics, except incidentally. But as the life and character of other celebrated men, no less prominent in the Dissertations, have been formally treated in the body of this work, it seemed due to the memory of Hume to give his biography a little more fully than in the few paragraphs dedicated to him in the previous editions; and the following sketch has therefore been inserted. It will be restricted to a brief account of his life and genius, an estimate of his merits as a writer, and probably a glance at one or two of such of his philosophical opinions as were too remote from the design of either Dissertation to challenge notice there, but yet may seem of sufficient importance to be referred to.

Hume has left us a very short autobiographic sketch of his own life; it is too scanty, too bare of details, to inspire the interest which belongs to some similar memoirs,—that of Gibbon for example. But though it is little more than a catalogue of dates and facts, the author offers a good apology for his conciseness—"It is difficult," he says, "for a man to speak long of himself without vanity." He assures the reader that the notice shall contain little more than the history of his writings, and he has kept his word. From all danger of vanity in treating such topics—however delicate for an author—he flattered himself he had security in his early failures—"The first success of my writings," says he, "was not such as to be an object of vanity." Yet the acerbity with which at that so distant day he remembers and records the slow steps by which he had emerged from obscurity into fame, and which all that fame had not been able to soothe, would seem to indicate that the philosopher had not quite so effectually mortified his vanity as he imagined. The tardy homage which the public paid to his merits is a theme to which he never tired of recurring, though, as will be seen in the sequel, not very reasonably.

He was born at Edinburgh, April 26, 1711. His father was a scion of the house of the Earl of Home, or Hume, as the name was often spelt, and as our philosopher, in opposition to his brother's orthographic heterodoxy, always persisted in spelling it. His mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, president of the College of Justice. His father died when he was a child; his mother, of whom he speaks in the fondest terms, was long spared to him, and well deserved the tribute of affection he pays her. "Though young and handsome, she devoted herself entirely to the rearing and education of her children." At the age of fifteen he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, and he tells us, what none will doubt, that he passed through the usual course of education with success; though his reading was marked at that time—and as regards the classics, was always marked—rather by extent than by accurate scholarship. Even at that early age he was possessed with an intense love of literature, and by that ambition of literary dis-

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1 "Every new edition was only an acknowledgment of the injustice which had been done him, and a poor instalment of his just dues. Hume at last wore out the patience of his very publisher" (Ed. Rev., Jan. 1847). As to the approbation or esteem of those blockheads who call themselves the public," thus he writes (1757) "and whom a bookseller, a lord, a priest, or a party can guide, I do most heartily despise it."

VOL. XII. tinction which was the ruling passion, not to say the only passion, of his life. Seldom, if ever, has the propensity to a studious life developed itself so early or so exclusively, or asserted its claims so imperiously. From the very first, and all along, it overmastered everything in the shape of pleasure or interest that could be brought into competition with it. As a younger brother, and a younger brother of no opulent house, he was, of course, to carve out his own fortunes in the world. "My patrimony," he says, "after the manner of my country, was but slender;" yet no lures, no exigencies could induce him to seek fortune at the expense of literature. In this case, the phlegm of the young philosopher seemed, in its way, as invincible as the enthusiasm of a young poet frequently proves; he could not, as the world would say, calculate consequences. To add to the wonder, Hume was most creditably anxious for independence, and resolved, at whatever costs of economy, to possess it. Nay, as his after-life showed, our philosopher was by no means insensible to the advantages of wealth; nevertheless, he was unwilling to adopt any course to attain riches at the expense of those literary pursuits which much more frequently conduct to penury. Thus all the schemes his friends formed on his behalf were frustrated by this one passion. His "studious habits, sobriety, and industry, led them to wish that he should devote himself to the law," in which surely these qualities, in conjunction with his surpassing acuteness and subtlety, might have easily won distinction; but while "they fancied he was poring over Voet and Vinnius—Cicero and Virgil were the authors he was secretly devouring." An experiment in mercantile life was equally unsuccessful. In 1734 he went to Bristol with introductions to "eminent merchants" in that city, but he found this "scene utterly unsuitable." He then exiled himself to France; and first at Rheims, then at La Flèche, devoted himself, in studious solitude, to literature and philosophy. During this time he made a "rigid frugality supply the deficiencies of fortune" (a course to which he resolutely adhered till the dawn of better days); and with singular decision of character, and obedience to the ruling passion, "regarded every object as contemptible except the improvement of his talents for literature." In this interval he meditated and composed his Treatise of Human Nature. This work was completed by his twenty-fifth year, and, as the production of so young a mind, must certainly be regarded as a prodigy of metaphysical acuteness. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the results of his speculation (if scepticism allow the term) must have been arrived at long before, even from his boyish days. In the account he gives of himself in that remarkable letter, first published by Mr Burton (vol. i., pp. 31-39), in which he anonymously consults a physician in relation to some singular but very prolonged hypochondrial affection (itself, probably, both symptom and effect of an overwrought mind), he discloses a style of thought and points to a method of speculation which strongly remind us of the conditions of mind under which Descartes commenced philosopher. Were there any proofs (as there are certainly none) of his acquaintance with Descartes' writings at this early age, it would have seemed almost certain that his method of philosophizing was sheer imitation; on the other hand, if this letter had been written after his residence at La Flèche, where Descartes felt so similarly, the same conclusion would have been inevitable. From this letter, as a clue to much in the character of his mind and its after history, and of its tendencies to morbid speculation at a very early date, we shall presently give some extracts.

In 1737, Hume came to London with his Treatise on Human Nature; and in the next year published it. "Never literary attempt," he says, "was more unfortunate: it fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur." He declares, however, that being naturally of a cheerful temper, he soon recovered from this and similar subsequent disappointments. Yet it is clear, from the details in Burton's Life, that the equanimity of our philosopher was sorely tried; that he had, with the exaggerations natural in a young author, been expecting that the world would have little to do for a time, except to read his lucubrations! He tells his friend Ramsay, that "he would not aim at anything until he could judge of his success in his grand undertaking, and see upon what footing he was to stand in the world;" and as the day of publication drew near, confesses to being perturbed at "the nearness and greatness of the event." Yet it is certain that he bore the disappointment of his hopes on this occasion much better than he did some far lighter failures of the same kind. Cheerful as might be his temper, buoyant as were his hopes, his mortifications of this sort, and especially that which befell him when he published the first volume of his History, were keenly felt and remembered, and engendered prejudices against the "Public," which little was a philosopher, and utterly prevented him from doing the said "Public" justice. Properly speaking, he never forgave its early neglect, and could not see that he had not been a very ill-used man, even when fame and competency had rewarded his at first unpromising labours. In the case of the Treatise of Human Nature, however, he himself admits, that in fact the public was in the right; which, indeed, any one would naturally expect, seeing that the philosopher was but five-and-twenty, and his philosophy the product of that mature age! That he was not insensible that his failure in the first instance was more attributable to himself than to the world is significantly shown by his acknowledgment of indiscretion in going to press so early. "I had always," he says, "entertained a notion, that my want of success in publishing the Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded more from the manner than the matter" (equally from both, the public would say), "and that I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion in going to the press too early." He tells us, he "set about remedying its defects." He cast the first part of it entirely anew in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, published 1747; but this, he confesses, had little more success than the former. In fact, he was still but serving his apprenticeship to fame—which many a man, as great, has had to do for a much longer period. In 1742, he published the first part of his Essays. These, which were buoyed up by large intermixture of more attractive topics than those of the Treatise, and were recommended by the fascinations of a far more finished style, met with a better reception, and they have since been always popular. The second edition, however, did not go off rapidly enough to satisfy the exacting temper of the author.—After publishing the Treatise, he lived for some time with his brother in Scotland, still ardently pursuing his literary occupations. This mode of life was not very agreeably diversified by the temporary charge of the half-maid, or at least wholly hypochondriacal Earl of Annandale (1745). Whether tutor or keeper be the more proper term for our philosopher during a year of very humiliating servitude, it seems hard to say. His next post (1747) was that of secretary to General St Clair, whom he accompanied "in his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin." He was introduced, he tells us, as aid-de-camp to the general, and wore the uniform of an officer,—a droll transformation for our ungainly philosopher. Two years were thus spent, almost the only years of his life, he declares, in which he was "estranged from literature." Total estrangement can hardly be supposed, nor does one see any reason for it. If it were so, the military uniform in his case must have done more than even the active duties of a soldier's life could do in that of Gibbon, in whom the passion for literature was, however, still more ardent than in Hume. Gibbon's account, in his Journal, of the absolute possession which history had taken of him, of the enthusiasm with which Hume indulged dreams of literary ambition and pursued his studies even in his tent, affords a striking instance of the ruling passion." But if Hume's occupations estranged him for a while from literature, the emoluments of his office were not to be despised; they so materially aided his very limited resources, that he sometimes pleasantly talked to his smiling friends of having achieved independent fortune: "I was now," says he, "master of near a thousand pounds!"

In 1749, he again repaired to his brother's house, where he took up his abode for two years. He spent his leisure in composing the second part of his essays, which he called Political Discourses, and his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. His publisher now told him, that his writings, "all but the unfortunate Treatise, were beginning to be asked for and talked about." "It was a hopeful symptom too," he tells us, "that answers by reverends and right reverends came out two or three in a year;" and that he "found, by Dr Warburton's railing, that the books were beginning to be esteemed in good company."

In 1751, he removed from the country to Edinburgh, under the notion that the "capital was the true scene for a man of letters;" and in the following year he published the Political Discourses; "the only work of mine," says he, "that was successful on the first publication." It is difficult to say what is the criterion of success in the estimate of unreasonable expectation; but Hume was still a young writer, and he certainly had no reason to complain of the reception of the first part of his Essays. Conscious of power, he was too impatient for fame, and forgot that fame is a thing of slow growth; he wished to see the oak rise immediately from the acorn. Meantime, grumble as he might, his sappings, in the estimate of any sober judge, would be thought to be doing well enough.

In the same year, he published in London, his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, of which he hesitates not to say, that "of all his writings, philosophical, literary, or historical, it is incomparably the best."

Hume wondered that Rousseau should prefer his Emile to his Heloise, and compares it to Milton's preference of his Paradise Regained to his Paradise Lost. Whether Hume himself be not another instance of a similar delusion, many readers will have their doubts. But much will depend on what is meant by "best." If Hume meant by "best," that the Enquiry was the most original and acute of his writings, that which displayed most power, posterity will hardly affirm his verdict; if by "best," he meant, that of all his writings, it is most free from paradox and error, it will probably be granted. Sir James Mackintosh has observed, that "it is creditable to him that he deliberately preferred the treatise which is least tainted with paradox, though the least original of all his writings." Sir James contends, however, for its pre-eminent excellence of style. For a very able criticism of its merits and defects, the reader is referred to the second Dissertation.

In 1752, Hume was appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advocates. The chief immediate value of the office, to which little or no emolument was attached, consisted in the access it afforded to a large library; indirectly, it was of greater advantage, as this last circumstance encouraged, if it did not suggest, his writing the History of England. Terrified, however, with the magnitude of the task, dreading, as he well might, to begin, after the orthodox manner, with the landing of Julius Caesar, he commenced with the accession of the Stuarts, "an epoch," he thought, "when the misrepresentations began chiefly to take place;" but which, let them be what they would, could hardly transcend his own. His anticipations of success were, as in former cases, sanguine, and he was doomed, for a while, to see the usual frustration of his hopes. "Miserable," says he, "was my disappointment; I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disappointment, and even execration. English, Scotch, and Irish; Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, united in their rage against the one man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford." Hume's indignation makes a droll mis-estimate of his own enormous delinquencies. If he had exercised common justice and impartiality, to say nothing of "generosity," in other cases, the few "generous tears" which the unwontedly sentimental sceptic could have managed to distil for Strafford or Charles, would never have given such mortal offence. It was yet more mortifying to the author, that the furious storm which greeted the first appearance of the work, subsided into a more vexatious calm; for what man would not sooner be railed at than forgotten? The History seemed doomed to oblivion. The publisher assured Hume, that "in a year he sold but forty-five copies." Hume himself confesses, that with two "odd exceptions,"—the Primates of England and Ireland,—he scarcely heard of any man of rank or letters who "could endure the book;" and that had it not been for the breaking out of the war with France (in spite of the "cheerful temper" with which he would have us believe his philosophy took such things), he would have sought an asylum there, and changing his name, for ever renounced his country! As it was, his country was spared this dire infliction. Meantime, Hume persevered, and his second volume which appeared two years afterwards had somewhat better success.

In 1759, he published, according to the retrograde course in which he had commenced, the history of the House of Tudor, which also was received with a storm of disapprobation. But if we may trust his own avowment, he was now "callous against the impression of public folly;" and gave the early history in two more volumes in 1761, "with tolerable, and but tolerable, success."

But that his complaints of want of success were, on the whole, unreasonable, is evident from his own statement, namely, that in spite of all "public folly," "the copy-money given him by the booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England." In fact he had been, as usual, too impatient of success. But even when he had become, and in a large degree from his literary labours, "not only independent, but opulent" according to his truly philosophical scale of riches,—he never forgave the "public folly" for not instantaneously recognising his merits.

Though his History had grievous defects, which he took care, in the indulgence of his prejudices (continually strengthening with opposition), to aggravate in every successive edition, it had also singular merits, and was secure of the popularity which the impatience of its author thought so tardy. It was nearly the first modern example of history treated in a philosophical spirit, while the charms of its unrivalled style would alone have insured its success.

In the interval between the first and second volumes of his History he published his Natural History of Religion; of which he says "the public entry was obscure;" its contents, acute as the treatise is, need not leave us in any wonder at that. For this neglect, however, he assures us he received consolation, in the shape of "a pamphlet by Dr Hurd, written with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility, which distinguish the Warburtonian school."

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1 On a subsequent occasion, when complaining of the tardiness of his political patrons, Hume repeated this sort of threat.—"The fuming incense," says the critic in the Ed. Review (1847), "which the Parisians were offering him as a sort of male Goddess of Reason must have intoxicated him, or he never would have closed a letter with the formal notice.—'I have been accustomed to meet with nothing but insults and indignities from my native country; but if it continue so,' ingrata patria, ne osa quidem habebis." The consolation, from this mode of speaking of it, would not seem very soothing.

Hume was now (1761) fifty years of age, and meditated a philosophical retreat in Edinburgh for the rest of his days; but on receiving an invitation from Lord Hertford to attend him in his embassy to Paris, with the prospect of secretaryship to the embassy, he, after some hesitation, consented. He was soon appointed secretary, and in 1765, when Lord Hertford was made lord-lieutenant of Ireland, was left at Paris as Chargé d’Affaires till the new ambassador, the Duke of Richmond, arrived. In 1766 he returned to Edinburgh, “not richer,” he pleasantly says, “but with much more money.”

During his residence in Paris, he was not only welcome, he was the rage. In spite of his philosophic shyness, his destitution of all personal graces and charm of manner, and even in spite of his French—French which only French politeness could have heard without laughing—he was overwhelmed with the most flattering attentions of combined rank and genius, youth and beauty. “The more I resiled from these excessive civilities,” says he, “the more I was loaded with them.” It is evident, nevertheless, from many expressions, that this homage was not a little soothing to our philosopher’s complacency, and often excited a flutter of vanity which his philosophy would hardly have approved; and he would as certainly have been cured of it, had he been daily conscious of the ridiculous position in which his worshippers often placed him. “From what has been already said of him,” says Lord Charlemont, “it is apparent that his conversation to strangers, and particularly to Frenchmen, could be little delightful, and still more particularly, one would suppose, to French women; and yet no lady’s toilette was complete without Hume’s attendance. At the opera his broad unmeaning face was usually seen entre deux jolis minois. The ladies in France gave the ton, and the ton was doism; a species of philosophy ill suited to the softer sex, in whose delicate frame weakness is interesting, and timidity a charm. . . . How my friend Hume was able to endure the encounter of these French female Titans, I know not.” Some of the scenes in which fashionable society doomed him to enact a part, must have been exquisitely comic; and had his friends intended to ridicule, not to honour him, they could hardly have devised anything better adapted to the purpose. The scene described so vividly by Madame D’Épinay, must surely have been abundantly trying. We have hardly space for the passage, but it is so graphic, and indeed so instructive, that we cannot resist the temptation to give an abridged translation below. On another occasion, still more trying to his gravity, if not to his modesty, he was compelled to listen to complimentary harangues from the Dauphin’s children,—the youngest of the child- orators unhappily breaking down in the middle of his address; we shall give the scene in Hume’s own vein of quiet pleasantry. It is clear that, however flattered by the homage he received, as other expressions in his letters prove, he was by no means insensible to the absurdity of the situation in which the extravagance of adulation sometimes placed him. “Do you ask me,” says he, “about my course of life? I can only say that I eat nothing but ambrosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe nothing but incense, and tread on nothing but flowers. Every man I meet, and still more, every lady, would think they were wanting in the most indispensable duty, if they did not make a long and elaborate harangue in my praise. What happened last week, when I had the honour of being presented to the D—n’s children, at Versailles, is one of the most curious scenes I have yet passed through. The Duc de B., the eldest, a boy of ten years old, stepped forth and told me how many friends and admirers I had in this country, and that he reckoned himself in the number, from the pleasure he had received from the reading of many passages in my works. When he had finished, his brother, the Count de P., who is two years younger, began his discourse, and informed me that I had been long and impatiently expected in France; and that he himself expected soon to have great satisfaction from the reading of my fine History. But what is more curious, when I was carried thence to the Count D’A., who is but four years of age, I heard him mumble something which, though he had forgot in the way, I conjectured from some scattered words, to have been also a panegyric dictated to him. Nothing could more surprise my friends, the Parisian philosophers, than this incident.”

The French of Hume could scarcely have been so bad as the malicious wit of Horace Walpole has represented it; if it was, it is hard to believe that, however prone may have been the French just at that moment to admire, he should have been able to get on in the saloons of Paris at all. Even French civility could hardly have kept its countenance. That it did not refrain from sarcasm we have some proofs, while Hume’s English acquaintance exercised it abundantly. “The French,” says Walpole with his customary cynicism, “believe in Mr Hume; the only thing in the world that they believe implicitly; for I defy them to understand any language which he speaks.” And in a letter first published in the Suffolk Correspondence, he says, with still more reckless causticity, “as every thing English is in fashion, our bad French is accepted into the bargain. Many of us are received everywhere. Mr Hume is fashion itself, although his French is almost unintelligible as his English.” It is not Walpole only, however, that makes himself merry with the philosopher’s French. One of Rousseau’s suspicions of Hume was founded on a few words of French which he uttered in his sleep. Hume remarked that he was not aware that he dreamt in French; “He could not,” quietly said M. Morellet.

Of his quarrel with Rousseau, which made so much noise

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1 Memoirs of Charlemont, cited in Burton’s Life, vol. ii., p. 223. To which we may add the following from Grimm’s Correspondance Littéraire:—“Ce qu’il y a encore de plaisant, c’est que toutes les jolies femmes se sont arraché, et que le gros philosophe Écossais s’est plus dans leur société. C’est un excellent homme, que David Hume; il est naturellement servile, il entend finement, il dit quelquefois avec sel, quoiqu’il parle peu; mais il est loint, il n’a ni chaleur, ni grâce, ni agrément dans l’esprit, ni rien qui soit propre à s’allier au ramage de ces charmantes petites machines qu’on appelle jolies femmes. O nous sommes heureux de voir que le génie de la race anglaise ne se manifeste pas seulement dans les grands écrivains, mais aussi dans les petits écrivains.” —Grimm.

2 The celebrated David Hume, the great fat English historian, known and esteemed for his writings, has not equal talents for the social amusements for which all our pretty women had decided him to be fit. He made his debut at the house of Madame de T—, They had destined him to act the part of a sultan seated between two slaves, employing all his eloquence to make them fall in love with him; finding them inexorable, he was to seek the cause of their obstinacy; he is placed on a sofa between the two prettiest women in Paris, who look at them attentively, keeps striking his hands on his stomach and knees, and finds nothing else to say to them than “ Eh bien! vous voilà donc là! Eh bien! vous voilà donc là! . . . Eh bien! vous voilà donc là! . . . vous voilà ici?” This lasted for a quarter of an hour without his being able to get any further. One of them at last rose impatiently. . . . Since then he has been doomed to the part of a spectator, and is not less welcome or flattered. In truth, the part he plays here is most amusing. Unfortunately for him, or rather for philosophic dignity (for he seems to have come here under these circumstances as well to this mode of life), there was no ruling mania in this country when he came here; under these circumstances he was looked upon as a new-found treasure, and the enthusiasm of our young heads turned towards him. All the pretty women are mad about him; he is to all the fine papers, and there is no good fête without him; in a word, he is among our fashionables what the Genevese are to me” (Memoires de Correspondance de Madame d’Épinay, vol. iii., p. 284). Well might a writer in the Edinburgh Review say, “Since the exhibition of the old Fablons de Aristote in love—down upon all-fours, and his mistress riding on his back—there has been no representation of philosophy so out of character, as it is shown us in the portrait of Hume by Madame d’Épinay” (Ed. Review, Jan. 1847).

3 Burton, vol. ii., p. 177, 178. at the time of its occurrence both in England and France; Hume, in the little sketch of his life, which comes up to within a short period of his death, says not one syllable. It certainly was not from thinking it of no importance, for it gave him a world of vexation; indeed he confessed it was one of the most painful, as well as the most extraordinary that had ever happened to him. It was perhaps partly from unpleasant remembrances, that he passed it by; but also probably from a more creditable motive. Angry, and justly angry as he had felt at Rousseau's ingratitude and absurdity—unphilosophically virulent as his language had sometimes been, he doubtless felt inclined as time rolled on, to acquiesce in the view since generally taken, namely, that the French philosopher's "egotism" and "sentimentality" were not seldom undistinguishable from madness; and whether they had produced it or resulted from it might be a fair question. Of the whole quarrel, a most copious and interesting account will be found in Burton's Life of Hume; and it is no more than just to say that Hume comes out of it in a manner highly creditable not only to his honour but to his benevolence. His friends in France had forewarned him what a monster of intractable caprice and infinite egotism he was patronizing—all which he found out when it was too late. Surely the scene which he himself paints with so much vividness, in which Rousseau, after fantastically misinterpreting an act of kindness into the most villainous malignity, suddenly relents, pops down into the surprised philosopher's lap, and sobs and blubbering out his momentary repentance amidst tears and kisses—repentance soon to be followed by a relapse into as capricious resentment—presents a picture of Rousseau, of which it is hard to say whether it be more pitiable or ludicrous; while we may easily conceive that to one of so "unsentimental" a nature as Hume, his involuntary role in so ridiculously "tender a scene" must have been profoundly mortifying.

"I endeavoured," says Hume, "to pacify you, and to divert the discourse, but to no purpose. You sat sullen, and was either silent, or made me very peevish answers. At last you rose up and took a turn or two about the room, when all of a sudden, and to my great surprise, you clasped yourself on my knee, threw your arms about my neck, kissed me with seeming ardour, and bedewed my face with tears."

I was very much affected, I own; and I believe a very tender scene passed between us." The description of Rousseau is, as may be expected, still richer.

After about two more years (1767-1769) of political service as under-secretary, a post to which he was preferred by General Conway, Hume finally retired to Edinburgh, and there anticipated a calm philosophic evening of life in the midst of his favourite society. To use his own words he was "very opulent," having a revenue of £1,000 a-year. His society was much courted by men of the highest literary reputation, and of the widest diversity of opinions, both political and religious. Freed from literary and all other cares, he entertained, "though somewhat stricken in years, the prospect of enjoying long his ease, and seeing the increase of his reputation."

These hopes were fallacious. In 1775 appeared the first symptoms of that long decay which terminated in his death, August 1776.

It is but justice to say that all concurrent testimony proves him to have borne this slow and harassing, though it seems, by no means painful illness, not only with exemplary fortitude and patience, but with much sweetness of temper, and to have contemplated the great change with undiminished serenity. Convinced that his disease was incurable long before his friends would believe it, he refused to listen to false predictions of returning health. When Dr Dundas intimated that he should tell his friend Colonel Elphinstone that he "was much better, and in a fair way of recovery," Hume replied, "Doctor, as I believe you would not choose to tell anything but the truth, you had better tell him that I am dying as fast as my worst enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily as my best friends could desire."

Sometimes, it is true, he regarded the approach of the last moment with a hilarity strangely unbecoming his situation, whether as a philosopher or a man; and his ill-timed pleasantry about Charon's boat might well have been spared. John Foster, in his review of Ritchie's Life of the philosopher, has observed, that even on the hypothesis that death is an extinction of our being, much more on that of Hume's scepticism, which left it uncertain whether death might not reveal the truth of what he had been doubting all his life long, anything bordering on levity in such an hour is utterly out of place. It is as though a man should laugh and caper in the cave of Trophonius. But, in other respects, it cannot be denied that Hume's last hours exhibit a serenity which, though often exemplified by religion, has rarely been exhibited by philosophy, and still more rarely by a sceptical philosophy.

Foolish inferences have been founded on what cannot without gross disingenuousness be denied—the philosophic fortitude and tranquillity of Hume's death,—and equally foolish attempts made to prove all that fortitude and tranquillity affectation. Experience ought to convince us that nothing can be inferred as to the adaptation of this or that system of philosophy or religion to produce calmness in a dying hour, from the phenomena of any individual death-bed. The best men have often encountered the great enemy with dismay, and the worst with tranquillity. We can as little infer from their conduct what death is to disclose, as we could infer what is at the bottom of a deep abyss, if we saw that, of a thousand men who were compelled to leap into it, some madly laughed, and some pusillanimously wept on the brink, before making the inevitable plunge. It should be sufficient to vindicate the superiority of at least a Christian's faith to every form of scepticism, that if he has really lived in accordance with his hopes and convictions, the natural tendency of his sentiments and conduct is to produce tranquillity at the last hour, whether, from physical causes, he attains that tranquillity or not; and that his "immortal hopes"—even if they were to prove delusions—are as naturally connected with a peaceful close of the great strife as any other cause with its effect. Nothing can be more true than the pointed declaration of Lord Byron: "Indisputably the firm believers in the Gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason, that, if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and, if there be no hereafter, they can be but with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope, through life, without subsequent disappointment, since (at the worst for them) 'out of' nothing nothing can arise, not even sorrow."

On the other hand, even the least candid of sceptics will acknowledge that there is nothing in scepticism itself—least of all in such radical, devastating scepticism as that of Hume—naturally calculated to soothe a dying hour. Though a sceptic may meet it with tranquillity, from frigidity of temperament or hardihood of character, or fixed aversion to look at the future, or from a too complacent estimate of his own worth, or a deficient moral sensibility, or from many other reasons, assuredly there is nothing in

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1 In the celebrated introduction to the letter to Baron d'Holbach, in which Hume first explodes in wrath, he says, "Mon cher Baron, Jean Jacques est un scélérat." 2 Burton, vol. ii., p. 342. 3 Hume certainly pronounces his own hope with sufficient confidence: "My friends," says he in his autobiography, "never had..." the native tendency of a sceptic's sentiments to render a death-bed more tolerable.

And that such is the natural impotence of sceptical philosophy for all such purposes, would seem to be indicated by the frequent appeal of sceptics to this "instantia solitaria" of Hume's deathbed. The rarity of the phenomenon neutralizes it as an argument; if, like the calm or triumphant deaths of consistently religious men, such a phenomenon were too common to be specially noted at all, it would be something to the purpose.

For Hume's scepticism, charity, we think, may blamelessly make ampler excuse than the generality of readers have been disposed to make. One may suspect, considering its remarkably early, uniform, and inveterate character, that it had to do profoundly with the very structure of his intellect, and was ab origine far more involuntary than is generally the case. It may, in our opinion, be even surmised that it was connected with that singular morbid condition from which he suffered so much at so early an age. The very curious document in which he discloses so freely the symptoms which oppressed him has been already referred to, and the brief citations we proposed to give will be found below; but the whole letter, first published in Burton's Life, is well worthy of perusal in extenso. It reveals a condition of mind, considering the writer's extreme youth, at least as unhealthy as that of the body. At an age when other youths are for the most part only too credulous he was entertaining universal doubt; and when others are full of nothing but poetry and love, he was presumptuously exploring the deepest problems that can engage the human intellect, and declaring that nothing certain was yet established in philosophy or morals! At the very time that he was labouring under the cloud of hypochondriacal depression, referred to in the letter from which we give extracts below, he was intensely excogitating his philosophy. His whole state was unnatural.

At the early age of twenty-two or twenty-three, his philosophical opinions were already nearly complete—that is, when he had hardly advanced beyond boyhood. His sceptical tendencies,—thus deeply radicated, and indulged at

occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct." If by this he meant to claim exemption only from flagrant vice, there are few decent characters in life who could not say as much; but, with a deeper self-knowledge and profounder moral sensibility, most men would own that they were conscious of too many failings which men knew not, and which God only knew, to permit them to plume themselves on any such grounds. But of the ordinary infirmities of man, and especially of the subtle spiritual vices of pride, vain glory, presumption, and prejudice, the biography and character of Hume present as little lack as those of other men.

"Every one who is acquainted either with the philosophers or critics knows that there is nothing yet established in either of these two sciences, and that they contain little more than endless disputes, even in the most fundamental articles. Upon examination of these I found a certain boldness of temper growing in me, which was not inclined to submit to any authority in these subjects, but led me to seek out some new medium by which truth might be established. After much study and reflection on this, at last, when I was about eighteen years of age, there seemed to be opened up to me a new scene of thought, which transported me beyond measure, and made me, with an ardour natural to young men, throw up every other pleasure or business to apply entirely to it. . . . I was infinitely happy in this course of life for some months; till at last, about the beginning of September 1729, all my ardour seemed in a moment to be extinguished, and I could no longer raise my mind to that pitch which formerly gave me such excessive pleasure. . . . In this condition I remained for nine months very uneasy to myself, as you may well imagine, but without growing any worse, which was a miracle. Although I was sorry to find myself engaged with so tedious a distemper, yet the knowledge of it set me very much at ease, by satisfying me that my former successes proceeded not from any defect of temper or genius, but from a disease to which any one may be subject. . . . I believe it is a fact, in fact, that most of the philosophers who have gone before us have been overthrown by the greatness of their genius, and that little merit is required to make a man succeed in this study, than to throw off all prejudices either for his own opinions or for those of others. At least this is all I have to defend, and for the sake of one of which I have multiplied to such a degree, that within these three years I find I have scribbled many a quire of paper in which there is nothing contained but my own inventions. This, with the reading most of the celebrated books in Latin, French, and English, and acquiring the Italian, you may think a sufficient business for one in perfect health, and so it would, had it been done to any purpose; but my disease was a cruel encumbrance on me. I found that I was not able to follow out any train of thought by one continued stretch of view, but by repeated interruptions, and by refreshing my eye from time to time upon other objects. . . . I have noticed in the writings of the French mystics, and in those of our fanatics here, that when they give a history of the situation of their souls they maintain a coldness and desolation of the spirit which frequently returns; and some of them at the beginning have been tormented with it many times. As this kind of devotion depends entirely on the force of passion, and consequently of the animal spirits, I have often thought that their imaginations were pretty parallel, and that their rapturous admirations might discompose the fabric of the nerves and brain, as much as profound reflections, and that warmth or enthusiasm which is inseparable from them.

"However this may be, I have no sooner got the clear view as they commonly tell us they have done, or rather begin to despair of ever recovering. . . . The question that would humbly propose to you are: Whether, among all these scholars you have been acquainted with, you have ever known any affected in this manner? Whether I can ever hope for a recovery? Whether I must long wait for it? Whether my recovery will ever be perfect, and my spirits regain their former spring and vigour, so as to endure the fatigue of deep and abstracted thinking?" (Burton, vol. i., p. 31-38.) Hume, David.

quiesced, in after life, in his first early conclusions—the very immaturity of which might well have awakened suspicion. There is no proof that, when he became a man in intellect, he ever seriously resolved them again. He must also be blamed for the resolute way in which he evaded or silenced every attempt to turn his mind to the reconsideration of his opinions. A remarkable instance of this disposition to get rid of expostulation occurs in one of his letters to Blair, cited by Mr Burton:—"Whenever," says Hume, "I have had the pleasure to be in your company, if the discourse turned on any common subject of literature or reasoning, I always parted from you both entertained and instructed. But, when the conversation was diverted by you from this channel towards the subject of your profession—though I doubt not but your intentions were friendly towards me—I own I never received the same satisfaction: I was apt to be tired, and you to be angry. I would therefore wish, for the future, whenever my good fortune throws me in your way, that these topics should be forbidden between us. I have long since done with all inquiries on such subjects, and am become incapable of receiving instruction."

Blair's letter, by the way, shows that Hume's Scottish clerical admirers did not hesitate to embrace opportunities of faithful expostulation as far as Hume's repellent humour permitted, and proves how unjust and uncharitable the suspicions which were sometimes founded on the intimacy between him and them. A man's Christianity would be equivocally evinced by renouncing all intercourse with such as renounce it; such conduct would suggest to those thus repelled a strange idea of the charity which professed to seek their spiritual welfare! It were rather to be desired that every Hume or Gibbon might have for his bosom friend a Bishop Butler or a Robert Hall.

Of the personal and social elements of Hume's character it is unnecessary to say anything, as the subject has been so admirably touched by Sir James Mackintosh, in his preliminary Dissertation. That he was very amiable, and well merited the admiration of his friends, cannot be doubted; though the eulogy of Adam Smith, uttered in the first freshness of grief at his loss is, as Sir James observes, "an affectionate exaggeration." Such a praise," he justly says, "can never be earned without passing through either of the extremes of fortune, without standing the test of temptations, dangers, and sacrifices. It may be said, with truth, the private character of Mr Hume exhibited all the virtues which a man of reputable station, under a mild government, in the quiet times of a civilized country, has often the opportunity to practise."

In certain respects, Hume presented rather a curious contrast. He was by no means the impassive person his general coldness of temperament would lead us to conclude, and by no means the unprejudiced person which a sceptical philosophy may be presumed to have a tendency to form, and which he would fain be thought. Where his solitary passion—literary ambition—was in question, his vanity is as impatient, exacting, and querulous as that of any mortal; in spite of constantly brightening prospects and widening fame, he is perpetually harping about imaginary neglect and imaginary persecution. Similarly as to prejudice; his bitterness against the English will just match, and no more than match, with Johnson's bitterness against the Scotch. In these two men, the two nations may justly consider themselves quits; and fortunately are never likely to have any more such absurd accounts to settle between them. It is the happiness of our age that Englishmen would as little tolerate the prejudices of Johnson as Scotchmen would those of Hume.—But it is in his historical writings that Hume's intense capacity of prejudice appears most signalily. He who was the most sceptical of philosophers became, in fact, the most bigoted of historians; with this aggravation of his bigotry, however,—that all the acts and opinions of which, in his history, he was so keen an apologist, were in direct defiance of the general strain of his political sentiments and speculations, as disclosed in his Political Essays.

o his character as a philosopher, his genius will probably be more appreciated, and its achievements less valued, by successive generations of readers. His capacity cannot be well exaggerated. That such a work as the Treatise of Human Nature, or the Essays, should have proceeded from so young a man, gives an impression of subtlety, acuteness, and ingenuity, seldom, if ever, surpassed. But these productions are chiefly remarkable as proofs of his genius, and for the searching investigations to which they led on the part of others; not for their intrinsic value. System, as both Stewart and Mackintosh observe, he had none; he is constantly shifting his ground, and contradictions without number may be detected in his writings. The fact is, that provided he could find any arguments to support the paradox of scepticism which happened to be the theme of one essay, he did not care how it might be opposed to some other paradox of scepticism which was defended in another essay. Thus, while speculatively arguing that neither "intuition," "demonstration," "experience," nor any other conceivable reason, really authorizes us to conclude that any one sequence will follow any one antecedent rather than another, or that the future will resemble the past, he, in his Essay on Miracles, declares all "miracles" utterly incredible, because they would contradict the uniformity of nature as ascertained by experience; ambitions to outdo Berkeley by annihilating not only matter but mind, and reducing everything in the universe to "impressions and ideas," he abundantly contradicts himself (but here, to be sure, he could not help it) by saying in the same breath, that of the existence of these "impressions and ideas" even scepticism cannot doubt, since we—that is, the doubted conscious unity, Mind—cannot but be conscious of them: similarly, while affirming, consistently enough in words all his life long, his belief in an intelligent First Cause (and it is the only determinate religious

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1 Thus he speaks of the English in 1764, "That nation are relapsing fast into the deepest stupidity and ignorance. The taste for literature is neither decayed nor depraved here as with the barbarians on the banks of the Thames. . . . Can you seriously talk of my continuing an Englishman? Am I, or are you, an Englishman? Do they not treat with derision our pretensions to that name, and with hatred our just pretensions to surpass and govern them? . . . (1775) I have a reluctance to think of settling among the factious barbarians of London, who will hate me because I am a Scotsman, and not a Whig, and despise me because I am a man of letters. . . . (1776) It is lamentable to think how much that nation has declined in literature in our time."

2 This inconsistency with his speculative principles is the least defect in that acute but sophistical performance. But its fallacies have been too often pointed out to need being mentioned here.

3 For all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past, and that similar powers will be exercised with similar sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever so regular, that alone, without some new argument or inference, proves not that for the future it will continue so. In vain do you pretend to have learned the nature of bodies from your past experience" (Essays, vol. II., Sceptical Doubts).

4 A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event" (Essays, vol. II., Miracles). tenet which he seems to have maintained), nearly all his speculative reasonings—especially his theory of causation—tend to show that of that primal truth there cannot be satisfactory proof; and he has even furnished atheism with a novel paradox in its support, founded on the world's being a "singular effect:" indignantly repelling, as a perversion of his meaning, the notion that he "had ever asserted so absurd a proposition as that any thing might arise without a cause," he has yet so expressed himself, that (as has been well said by one of his most acute critics) the entire metaphysical world has shared in the mistake! Magnanimously declaring at one time that the philosopher must abide by truth, even though it were proved pernicious to mankind,—quite in the lofty fiat justitia ruat coelum style,—he, at another, advises (and it is a deep blot on his character) a sceptical friend to accept church preferment, and preach what he did not believe; affirming that "to pique oneself on sincerity in such matters is to put too great a respect on the vulgar and their superstitions!" Well may one of his most charitable critics proclaim himself "ashamed to print" the philosopher's words! Again, while in his Essay on Polygamy and Divorce he sees so clearly and illustrates so well the infinite importance of preserving the domestic relations pure, he speaks, in his Inquiry into the Principles of Morals, in an apologetic tone of vices which, if freely indulged, would soon dissolve society—an inconsistency which has called forth the just animadversion of Sir James Mackintosh.

In a word, there is no end to the incoherencies of Hume's statements, and which are only concealed so long, as one essay is not collated with another. He wrote, as it were, with the old Roman stylus—a sharp pen at one end, and an instrument of erasure at the other.

His fame as a philosopher, therefore, will rest rather on what he was capable of than on what he achieved; and it may be said, by a somewhat similar paradox, that his fame as an historian will rest much more on his manner than on his matter. His work is everywhere disfigured with gross defects, inaccuracies, and prejudices, as Hallam, Brodie, and many others, have abundantly shown; but the charm of his style embalms and perfumes his errors, and men will still be willing to read him—though they disbelieve.

Not, indeed, that even his style as an historian is wholly free from defects. It is cold—that might be expected from the frigid temperament of the man. It is wanting in imaginativeness, and consequently in animation, and the perfection of graphic skill. This fault again is often aggravated by superficial knowledge of his materials; for a full mastery of details is the only thing which can render precise statement safe. Thus Hume often omits names and dates where they ought to be inserted, and conceals the necessity of definite statement in convenient vagueness. His assertions are often so general and so adroitly balanced and qualified, that they seem to betray a consciousness that he is standing on delicate ground, and that he had better not commit himself to too much exactness, lest some critic of greater knowledge of details should convict him of inaccuracy. These artifices he employs no doubt with great dexterity, but one would greatly have preferred that there should have been no occasion for them. Still, in spite of all these deductions, the narrative is so lucid, the grouping so admirable, the reflections so unforced and natural, and the style flows on in such a stream of tranquil beauty—combining so much both of flexible grace and natural dignity, that his work will ever stand high in the estimate of every cultivated taste. It is an instance of the importance of style, as Sir J. Mackintosh remarked of Butler. That profound thinker has been often undervalued for want of a style worthy of his thoughts: the work of Hume, in spite of its defects, has been raised into one of the most familiar manuals of history, because it has one. So senseless is that cry which one sometimes hears—that style is of little consequence, if facts be but stated! When was human nature ever got to disregard the medium and the manner in which truth was presented? So little is this to be expected, that though Hume's inaccuracies have been exposed a thousand times, he still maintains, in virtue of his style alone, the place of a classic of English history.

The same qualities of style are, if possible, more manifest in Hume's Philosophical Essays. Amidst that absence of all generous enthusiasm which we should expect in so complete a Pyrrhonist, and a prodigal use of subtle and ingenious sophistry that would seem to have had no other object than to confound and perplex the intellect of the reader, they abound in passages which, considered simply as composition, are exquisite specimens of refined simplicity—of that severe Attic grace which it is evident he had carefully studied and cultivated, as well as of a very quiet but most elegant pleasantry. And amongst such passages few are more striking than those in which the sceptic acknowledges the vanity of scepticism.

The fullest and most authentic account of Hume's Life and Writings will be found in Burton's recent Life, 2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1846; to which we willingly confess our obligations.

Hume, Joseph, an eminent political reformer of the nineteenth century, was born in 1777, of humble parents in Montrose. After such an education as the grammar school of his native place then afforded, he was apprenticed to a surgeon, and in 1793 began a course of medical study at the University of Edinburgh. After graduation he sailed for India, where he was attached as surgeon to a regiment; and his knowledge of the native tongues (which he took care to master immediately on landing), and his capacity for business, threw open to him the lucrative offices of interpreter and commissary-general. While still in the prime of life he was enabled to return home with a well-earned fortune. His first care on arriving in England was to study thoroughly the country and its resources, and in the various journeys which he made to see with his own eyes the actual state of the people and the practical operation of the laws, he amassed that stock of useful knowledge which was the real secret of his subsequent success in parliament. In 1812 he took his seat for the borough of Weymouth and Melcomb Regis, but was soon after obliged to resign it, when it was discovered by his Tory patron that he had had the audacity to talk of reform. Six years elapsed before he again entered the House, and during that interval he had made the acquaintance and imbibed the doctrines of James Mill and the philosophical reformers of the school of Bentham. In 1819, soon after his marriage, he re-entered parliament, and began unaided

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1 Nothing can be happier than the pleasantry in some of Hume's familiar letters, and it makes us regret that we have not more of them. We would willingly exchange for them portions either of his Essays or his History, bulk for bulk. Light and trivial in comparison no doubt they would be, but one might find consolation in thinking that elegant triviality was at least as good as grave error or perilous paradox. How graceful is the following badinage—"I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old house in St James's Court, which is very cheerful, and even elegant, but too small to display my great talent for cookery—the science to which I intend to subject the remaining years of my life! I have just now lying on the table before me a receipt for making soupe à la reine, copied with my own hand. For beef and cabbage (a charming dish), and old mutton, and old claret, nobody excels me. I make also sheep's-head broth, in a manner that Mr Keith speaks of it for eight days after; and the Duc de Nivernois would bind himself apprentice to my lady to learn it! I have already sent a challenge to David Moncreif; you will see that in a twelvemonth he will take to the writing of history (the field I have described), for, as to giving of dinners, he can now have no further pretensions. I should have made a very bad use of my abode in Paris, if I could not get the better of a mere provincial like him."