258

tion: but being resolved to add to this edition the
quotations of authorities for the reigns of James I.
and Charles I., I was obliged to run over again the
most considerable authors who had treated of these
reigns; and I happily discovered some more mis-
takes, which I have now corrected. As I began
the History with these two reigns, I now find
that they, above all the rest, have been corrupted
with whig rancor, and that I really deserved
the name of a party writer, and boasted without
any foundation of my impartiality; but if you
now do me the honor to give this part of my
work a second perusal, I am persuaded that you
will no longer throw on me this reproachful epi-
thet, and will acquit me of all propensity to whig-
and cry, Whig vous-
gism. If you still continue to upbraid me, I shali
be obliged to retaliate on you,
même.

of barbarism." (p. 392.) It is in this insensibility | I corrected some of these mistakes in a former edito the feelings and motives of a rude though vigorous age we can trace one principal cause of the failure of Hume's "History," especially of the early period. Mr. Burton gives us his own "character of a complete history," (vol. ii., pp. 123-7,) not the best part of the editor's lucubrations. He rests much on the incompatibility of Ininute antiquarian research with the higher duty of an historian. We think him mistaken; but if all the necessary materials had been collected to his hand, and he had used them all, Hume could not have written a satisfactory history of the earlier times of England. He might have emptied the whole Saxon Chronicle and Domesday into his volumes, and crowded his margins with Palgrave and Thorpe; he could never have produced a fitting history of old England. The man who looked upon the introduction of Christianity as a monkish juggle, who could trace nothing of the sturdy English character to the Anglo-Saxon institutions, to whose eyes all bishops and priests were but fat encumberers of the soil, and knights and heralds brought up no image but of violence and rapine, could never have handled well the old "History of England," under whatever rule, be it Saxon, Norman, or Plantagenet. He could not sympathize with the past he did not think it worth while even to try to understand it.

66

"In page 33, vol. v., you will find a full justification of the impositions laid on by James I. without authority of parliament; in pages 113, 114, 389, a justification of persecuting the Puritans; in page 180, a justification of Charles I. for levying tonnage and poundage without consent of parliament.

*

"I now justify James II. more explicitly in his exercise of the dispensing power, which was intimately interwoven with the constitution and monarchy."-Vol. ii., pp. 144, 145.

We must admit that Hume only felt half the force of the words he quotes of his Greek master, when he professed to write his History as a possession forever.

Another reason remains behind. We believe Hume sat down to plan his History partly as a charming exercitation of his metaphysical mind. He wrote the "History of the Stuarts" with no more sifting of evidence than he bestowed on his

66

per and spirit with which his idol Racine might sit down to pen a tragedy. Of minor matters he did He had a wide canvass, and not regard so much what was actually fact as what was poetically true.

But now comes the more difficult question of the cause of so much misrepresentation in the History of the Stuarts." Here was a time of sufficient civilization-a war of fine principles for choice. Royalty and loyalty on the one handfreedom and the commons on the other. Then why has Hume in some respects failed? Why was the first philosophical historian of modern It appears to us there are times a partial one? In the middle of last several concurring causes. Essay on the Authenticity of Ossian,” (vol. ii., century, when Hume wrote, criticism was in its infancy-historical criticism unknown. The weigh- p. 36.) It did not enter into his plan to grub out ing of evidence of fact, or calm and dispassionate received errors, and establish facts by proof. He balancing of party principles, was not yet dreamt chose an interesting hero, as he admonished Robof. Historians everywhere were still undisguised ertson to do, (vol. ii., p. 84.) The leading incipartisans. For some time, too, whig or revolution dents were notorious and popular, as fits the politics, as they were called, had been in the as-groundwork of a drama, and he went on in a temcendant, and were supported with intemperance and unfairness. The most candid man, applying his mind to history at such a time, might feel inclined to throw his weight into the opposite scale, and consider himself as on the whole serving the cause of justice in furnishing a refined pleading for the depressed party. In painting the royalists, in the great struggle of principles, in their own colors; in giving to loyalty, to love of order, to disgust at fanaticism, that prominence which they really had in the minds of the saner portion of the Cavalier party, Hume was setting forth a part of the truth-contributing something which was then as necessary to the just appreciation of the spirit of the age as if he had applied himself to sifting proofs and examining documents. That in thus writing, however, he neglected the greatest and highest duty of his office-that he left the seat of judgment for the pleader's bar-will not now be denied. He wrote as an advocate, and the opposition his history met with only stimulated his advocacy.

"In this new edition," he writes to Elliot in June, 1763, "I have corrected several mistakes and oversights, which had chiefly proceeded from the plaguy prejudices of whiggism, with which I was too much infected when I began this work.

the outline of a fine subject

Presenting Thebes or Pelops' line;" and if he did not group his figures in the best composition, and throw his lights secundum artem, he had himself to blame. There are many who think it is a pity to shake our confidence in Livy's History, when all our school philosophy is founded on his facts. Hume might defend himself so; and had no objection that his History, in like manner, might be considered as "philosophy teaching by examples," though the examples were often ideal. But he says of himself, “a passion for literature was the ruling passion of my life;" and the first point was to achieve a great literary triumph-to produce a finished and perfect historical tragedy that might rival in plot, in denouement, in highwrought interest, as well as in grace and beauty of diction, one of the great works of ancient art, Taking this object as paramount, there cannot be a doubt that the Royalist was the poetical and proper tragic version to adopt; and Hume for the time threw aside his whiggism, which he had not

yet got rid of in real life, as well as his skeptical | is most imbued with the spirit and language of a weighing and examination of principles, and in great writer is least likely to make actual quotathe idealizing process kept only the figures, and tions from his page. There are evidently other names, and dates, and landmarks of actual events, causes which derange the calculation. The and threw over them the coloring of the artist, the authorities produced must of course often depend mist of the magician, where "all was delusion, more upon the subject in hand than on the familiar nought was truth." With these views, taking reading of the writer; and the author of the essay Charles as the centre of his composition, Hume "On the Populousness of Ancient Nations" was gave him all the interest he could heap upon him, necessarily led by his subject to consult books that according to his notions. To have represented might be foreign to his general studies and taste. him as strict and rigid even to austerity, in reli- Still the point is not without interest, and somegious tenets and observances, as he in later life thing may be found from such an inquiry. We certainly was, would have lowered him in the phi- give it for no more than it is worth. losopher's eye: moreover, it would have interfered with the artistic simplicity of effect, which required the dark side of rebellion to be made darker with unrelieved fanaticism. The oppressions of the law, the illegal extortion of money on the king's side, which every one now admits, are not passed over, nor denied, nor palliated; but by a single dash of the brush, the shadow of the picture is made to cover them so that the eye never rests on them. The iron severity of Strafford, the bigotry and oppression of Laud, the tergiversation of Charles -a deep blemish in a noble nature-all are there, but huddled into the background; while the artist brings into the full blaze of his sunshine the amiable and heroic qualities of the king, the courage and genius of his great minister, and even the primate's zeal and genuine piety, to increase the tragic effect of their sufferings and death. It is done with admirable skill; and the spectator, enchanted with the picture, rejects all criticism against the truth of its facts. The story flows on so sweetly, it is impossible to stop it to ask the i.npertinent question, " Is it true?"

In this artist skill the historian of the House of Stuart is unrivalled. You can find few false statements or mistakes on matters of any real importance-not many suppressions of fact. You can rarely detect any ingenious sophistry. Praise and blame are duly awarded where merited. But all is made subservient to the "effect" which the great picture must produce to be perfect as a work of art.

It is here that Hume shows his mastery, more than in any perfection of mere style and language; and yet the easy, equal, sustained style of the historian was well suited to his object, and, indolent as he certainly was in many points, this achievement was the result of much study and labor well concealed. It never falls below the dignity and interest of the narrative, and shuns all flights that night distract the attention from the great scene spread before us.

In Hume's time and for long after, (and perhaps it is so still,) no Scotchman wrote English without fear of blunders; and Hume was peculiarily sensitive in this matter. Even when success might have given confidence, his correspondence shows us how careful he was to have the assistance of his English friends for purifying his language of its northern spots and turns. By what discipline could one thus suffering under the irksome dread of provincialism school himself into the easy seeming language of Hume? He has furnished us with no key to this himself. In the dearth of other information, we have looked over the index of his philosophical works to find the authors quoted or referred to. At the same time we know how fallacious it is to rest on such foundations. It is one thing to cite an author and another to have studied his style; and perhaps the man who

The index of a common edition of the collected Essays, professing to notice all the authors quoted or remarked upon, gives the names of forty Greek writers, thirty-eight Latin, twenty-eight French, nineteen English, nine Italian. Of the Greek authors, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch are each cited about thirty times:-Polybius, Xenophon, and Strabo, about half as often-Herodotus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, and Lucian, each about twelve times;-Plato and Aristotle, each nine times;-Hesiod, Lysias, seven times each; Homer five times; and no other Greek authors so often as these. Of Latin writers, Tacitus is quoted twenty-four times; the elder Pliny, fifteen; Cicero, nineteen; Horace, fourteen; Livy, twelve: Columella, seven; Quinctilian and Cæsar, each six; Martial, four; Petronius and Virgil, each thrice; Terence, twice. Of French writers, he cites Fontenelle four times; the Abbé Dubos as often; Racine thrice; Rochefoucault twice; Voltaire and Boileau, each once. Among the Italians. Machiavelli is quoted seven times; Ariosto and Guicciardini, each twice; Boccaccio, once. His English authorities are still more curious. quotes Bacon and Locke, each seven times; Pope, five times; Swift, thrice; Shakspeare, twice; Bolingbroke, twice; Berkeley, Hutchinson, Addison, Prior, Parnell, each once. He quotes three or four early fathers; two modern theologians; the Bible, the Koran, and Cervantes, each once.

Ile

Now undoubtedly, such a list shows extensive research and study; and it would be hard to find an instance where a great array of authorities is used to better account than in the "inquiry regarding the populousness of ancient nations." His correspondence also is full of classical quotations and allusions. There is, however, something in the manner of the references which frequently suggests the idea, that the author consulted his Greek authors in the Latin translations; and there is a small slip of aos, meaning "blood," in one of his last letters, (ii. p. 504,) which is scarcely consistent with any habitual reading of Greek. He had evidently no familiar acquaintance with the Greek dramatists, probably not more than the French books of belles-lettres supplied. Homer he undoubtedly read in the original, and he loves to quote him even in his familiar letters, but too correctly, and as if he had the book open to make the quotation. Thucydides he must have studied; and he knew how to value the great historian when he pronounces "the first page of his work the commencement of real history." (Essay on Eloquence.) He appreciated the clearness and truth of Xenophon and Cæsar; but his admiration was reserved for the mixed historical and romantic biographies of Plutarch, which he recommended to Robertson as a model, and of which he himself at one time meditated a translation, (vol. ii., p. 84.) Hume knew Cicero well. Horace, and still more

*

Virgil, he often quoted from memory in his letters, | dence at Grignan stops the correspondence of the
supplying or altering as he best could. He prob-queen of letter-writers. When Hume is quietly
ably read Latin with sufficient ease-but it is evi- placed among his dearest friends, and busy with
dent that he had never studied the language with his great work, he cannot have much time or occa-
any sort of care. As for English, it would seem
that Hume scarcely studied in that language,
except when the subject on which he was engaged
compelled him, or read its authors for his pleasure.
He certainly drew none of his language from the
"pure well of English undefiled." The Bible,
the best book for the study of the present English
tongue, he was not likely to dwell upon. Shak-
speare and Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, were
barbarous, neglecting the unities and so forth;
Milton, though learned in all the learning of the
classics, was no classicist, and, moreover, was
fanatical; the band of writers who first wielded
English prose as masters were mostly churchmen,
and were indeed in his time generally disregarded
or unknown. Bacon he had read, but only for his
philosophy. Johnson had not yet directed the
student of English composition to give his days
and nights to Addison; and though Robertson was
never weary of poring over Swift, it may be
doubted if Hume could appreciate the most idio-
matic of modern English styles. He chose his
models and his rules elsewhere. He studied the
Parisian writers on criticism and belles-lettres;
followed Boileau and his school; affected to rave
of Sophocles and Racine as near of kin; and,
without an intimate knowledge of the languages
of the classics, or a heartfelt appreciation of their
spirit, still set them up as the ideal objects of his
imitation both in form and essence.

sion for letter-writing. The incident of his quar-
rel with the learned body of lawyers, whose officer
he was, for polluting the shelves of a great public
library, in fact the national depository of literature,
with the works of Lafontaine and Crebillon, (p.
395,) is ridiculous enough, unless it was a mere
pretex for attacking him, when it becomes some-
thing worse. But he was able now to stand alone.
His works were rising in popularity and prut.
We find notices of several visits to London in con-
nexion with new editions. He had moved in 1762
from his "tenement" in Riddell's Land to a more
spacious house which he bought in St. James'
Court-the same flat, as Mr. Burton proves by
a legal document, in which Boswell afterwards
received Johnson-though Bozzy of course did not
tell his guest the name of his landlord. In 1763
he wrote to Adam Smith:-"I set up a chaise
in May next: and you may be sure a journey to
Glasgow will be one of the first I shall undertake."
(Vol. ii., p. 148.) In short, he was advancing in
the steady progress of an industrious and prudent
and most successful literary man, surrounded by
friends and all comforts, now playing the bountiful
host in his own house to a band of guests such as
will never meet again, now enjoying the free-
dom of the " Poker” club-when the quiet tenor
of his days was interrupted by his visit to Paris
as secretary to Lord Hertford, the English ambas-
sador.

It was undoubtedly on those models that he Hume's reception and success in Paris (1764-5 formed his style: but he bestowed upon it no com--6) were enough to turn almost any head; and mon labor, and brought to the study no common they had some effect upon his. His skeptical qualifications. Clear good sense, an admirable philosophy, distasteful even then to the general precision of thought and reasoning, gave a similar precision and transparency of diction: a remarkable simplicity of mind, joined to a quick sense of the ridiculous, guarded him against attempting too high a flight. These qualities of his nature, with a never-ceasing watchfulness of his words,† enabled him to produce a narrative which, without the gracefulness of native and racy English, has the great merit of expressing his sense clearly and simply, and, by a wonderful art, leading us to forget the writer and the language under the fascination of his story. There is no greater triumph in this department, but it is the victory of thinking rather than of writing.

Much as we should wish to keep company with Hume in the society of his Edinburgh friends, we should be unreasonable to expect it. The resi

*One specimen of verse, when Hume was forty-five, may suffice. It must have been a strange ear that allowed this mangling of an Ovidian hexameter. Nam simul ac mea caluerant pectora musæ.-( (ii, p. 20,) The grammar is worthy of the quantity. He plainly intended caluerant to mean heated, and to govern pectora.

mind of England, was received with universal applause in the circle of encyclopædists. His history had already drawn upon him the volunteered correspondence of the Comtesse de Boufflers, and he was assured of a general welcome. To prepare him the more to enjoy it, he had to contrast it with a decided want of success in London society. He never loved the English; and, in the time of Hume and Lord Bute, North Britons were not popular in the south. He wrote thus bitterly to Elliot :

"I believe, taking the continent of Europe from Petersburg to Lisbon, and from Bergen to Naples, there is not one who ever heard my name who has not heard of it with advantage, both in point of morals and genius. I do not believe there is one Englishman in fifty who, if he heard I had broke my neck to-night, would be sorry; some, because I am not a whig; some, because I am not a Christian; and all, because I am a Scotsman. Can you seriously talk of my continuing an Englishman? Am I or 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?"—Vol. ii., p. 238.

And again, to Dr. Blair :

The care of his style appears even in his letters, many of which are preserved in the first draft, and show constant correction where another word or phrase seem"There is a very remarkable difference between ed neater than that first chosen. The same practice is London and Paris; of which I gave warning to met with even in the letters actually sent to his familiars, and-what is not always the case with others his alter Helvetius, when he went over lately to England, ations were always for the better. His style of letter- and of which he told me, on his return, he was writing became much easier as he advanced in life, and fully sensible. If a man have the misfortune, in in his later correspondence he gave up a practice which the former place, to attach himself to letters, even offends the reader of his (collected) early letters,-repeat- if he succeeds, I know not with whom he is to ing the same story, or thought, or play of words-sometimes almost in the same phrase, in several letters, to dif- live, nor how he is to pass his time in a suitable society. The little company there that is worth

ferent friends.

conversing with, are cold and unsociable; or are retains that amiable character which made him warmed only by faction and cabal; so that a man once the delight of all France. He had always who plays no part in public affairs becomes alto- the best cook and the best company in Paris. But gether insignificant; and, if he is not rich, he though I know you will laugh at me, as they do, becomes even contemptible. Hence that nation I must confess that I am more carried away from are relapsing fast into the deepest stupidity and their society than I should be by the great ladies ignorance." Vol. ii., p. 268. with whom I became acquainted at my first introThus wrote David Hume of London in 1765-duction to court, and whom my connections with exactly in the most flourishing æra of Boswell's the English ambassador will not allow me entirely immortal cycle-exactly when Burke, Johnson, to drop."-Vol. ii., p. 181. Beauclerk, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick-not to mention Warburton, and Chesterfield, and Walpole-were in the topmost blaze of their social enjoyment and renown! The "History of the Stuarts" had appeared nine years before.

always have something to pretend to with the fair | by witnesses who laugh at the triumphing hero

sex.

while they affirm the triumph. Mr. Burton has collected a few passages from contemporaries, of which the following are to our purpose:

"Ce qu'il y a encore de plaisant, c'est que toutes les jolies femmes se le sont arraché, et que le gros philosophe Ecossais s'est plu dans leur société. C'est un excellent homme, que David Hume; il est naturellement serein, il entend fine

"Do you not think it happy for me to retain such a taste for idleness and follies at my years; especially since I have come into a country where the follies are so much more agreeable than else where? I could only wish that some of my old friends were to participate with me of these amusements; though I know none of them that can, on occasion, be so thoroughly idle as my-ment, il dit quelquefois avec sel, quoiqu'il parle self."-Vol. ii., p. 196.

After the lapse of more than a twelvemonth, he writes thus to Blair :

peu; mais il est lourd-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 que nous sommes un drôle de peuple!"-Correspondance Littéraire de Grimm, vol. v., p. 125.

Madame d'Epinay gives us the picture of the fat historian in some charades of the day, cajoled into enacting the part of a sultan, who was to make violent love to two beauties of the seraglio, (the two prettiest women in Paris.) He is on a sofa between them, gazing steadfastly at them

66

"Il se frappe le ventre et les genoux à plusieurs reprises, et ne trouve jamais autre chose à leur dire que-Eh bien! mes demoiselles ... Eh bien! vous voilà donc... Eh bien! vous voilà . . . vous voilà ici.' Cette phrase dura un quart d'heure sans qu'il pût en sortir."

He was not pressed to play any more; but, says the lady,

Il n'en est pas moins fêté et cajolé. C'est en vérité une chose plaisante que le rôle qu'il joue ici. Malheureusement pour lui, ou plutôt pour la dignité philosophique, (car, pour lui, il paraît s'accommoder fort de ce train de vie,) il n'y avait aucune manie dominante dans ce pays lorsqu'il y est

"In Paris a man that distinguishes himself in letters meets immediately with regard and attention. I found, immediately on my landing here, the effects of this disposition. Lord Beauchamp told me that I must go instantly with him to the Duchess de la Vallière. When I excused myself, on account of dress, he told me that he had her orders, though I were in boots. I accordingly went with him in a travelling frock, where I saw a very fine lady reclining on a sofa, who made me speeches and compliments without bounds. The style of panegyric was then taken up by a fat gentleman, whom I cast my eyes upon, and observed him to wear a star of the richest diamonds;-it was the Duke of Orleans. The duchess told me she was engaged to sup in President Hénault's, but that she would not part with me-I must go along with her. The good president received me with open arms; and told me, among other fine things, that, a few days before, the dauphin said to him, &c., &c., &c. Such instances of attention I found very frequent, and even daily. You ask me, if they were not very agreeable? I answer-no; neither in expecta-arrivé: on l'a regardé comme une trouvaille dans tion, possession, nor recollection. I left that fire- cette circonstance, et l'effervescence de nos jeunes side, where you probably sit at present, with the têtes s'est tourné de son côté. Toutes les jolies greatest reluctance. After I came to London, my femmes s'en sont emparées; il est de tous les souuneasiness, as I heard more of the prepossessions pers fins, et il n'est point de fête sans lui."of the French nation in my favor, increased; and Mém. de Mde. d'Epinay, vol. iii., p. 284. nothing would have given me greater joy than any Horace Walpole writes from Paris:-"Hume is accident that would have broke off my engage-treated here with perfect veneration. His history, ments. When I came to Paris, I repented heartily so falsified in many parts, so partial in as many, so of having entered, at my years, on such a scene; very unequal in its parts, is thought the standard and, as I found that Lord Hertford had entertained a good opinion and good will for Andrew Stuart, I spoke to Wedderburn, in order to contrive expedients for substituting him in my place. Lord Hertford thought for some time that I would lose all patience and would run away from him. But the faculty of speaking French returned gradually to me. I formed many acquaintance and some friendships. All the learned seemed to conspire in showing me instances of regard. The great ladies were not wanting to a man so highly in fashion and, having now contracted the circle of my acquaintance, I live tolerably at my ease. have even thoughts of settling at Paris for the rest of my life; but I am sometimes frightened with the idea that it is not a scene suited to the languor of old age. I then think of retiring to a provincial town, or returning to Edinburgh, or - but it is not worth while to form projects about the matter. D'Alembert and I talk very seriously of taking a journey to Italy together; and, if Lord Hertford leave France soon, this journey may probably have place."-Vol. ii., p. 268.

of writing," (vol. ii., p. 225.)

"For Lord Lyttleton, if he would come hither and turn free thinker once more, he would be reckoned the most agreeable man in France—next to Mr. Hume, who is the only thing that they believe implicitly, which they must do, for I defy them to understand any language that he speaks."-(Vol. ii., p. 226.)

This great and firm success in the most difficult society in the world is not to be accounted for, either by the literary merits of Hume, or in the manner Madame d'Epinay explains it. There might be something in the present want of a I" lion." There was much in the admiration of the metaphysician and historian. His skepticism was better still, and, of course, the more valued as coming from benighted England. But, after all, we can well believe that these only gave the needful standing-place. His success subsequently is at all events very much to be attributed to the same qualities that made him the favorite of his little society at home. The "Honest David Hume" of Dr. Carlyle and the Edinburgh club, was the “bon David" of the French salons. His unselfish, kindly He has plainly schooled himself into moderation, nature, the sincerity of his friendships, the goodand we might trust his own report as not over-ness of his temper, were the qualities that won stated. But we have his success recorded by him love and esteem everywhere, and in that overother pens not liable to exaggeration; spoken to refined society there was a charm in the unaffected