JOHNSON. "Sir, I have never complained of the world; nor do I think that I have reason to complain. It is rather to be wondered at that I have so much."' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 116.

Note 8. Three years later Hume wrote to Gibbon, on reading the first volume of the Decline and Fall:-'Whether I consider the dignity of your style, the depth of your matter, or the extensiveness of your learning, I must regard the work as equally the object of esteem; and I own, that if I had not previously had the happiness of your personal acquaintance, such a performance from an Englishman in our age would have given me some surprise. You may smile at this sentiment, but as it seems to me that your countrymen, for almost a whole generation, have given themselves up to barbarous and absurd faction, and have totally neglected all polite letters, I no longer expected any valuable production ever to come from them.' The high position that Hume held among men of learning is shown by what Gibbon has recorded :—'A letter from Mr. Hume overpaid the labour of ten years.' Misc. Works, i. 224.

Hume has the less excuse for the outburst in the text against the factiousness of the English, as Strahan in his last letter, dated Jan. 25, had said: 'Our pretended patriots are either asleep or appear to be so. In short Wilkes and Liberty are heard of no more.' M.S.R. S. E.

Note 9. Strahan had written to Hume on Jan. 25:-' After what you now tell me I altogether despair of seeing a continuation of your History from yourself; but I have some notion it may be done by some other hand; perhaps Sir John Dalrymple or Mr. Macpherson.' M. S. R. S. E. The latter volumes of Smollett's History have been so generally taken by the booksellers as a continuation of Hume, that it is commonly believed that he was, as an historian, merely his 'continuator.' He had however published his Complete History of England from the descent of Julius Cæsar to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, before Hume had done more than bring out the History of England under the Stuarts. Hume however had completed his work before Smollett, with the help of William Guthrie, published the five concluding volumes which carried down his History to the year 1765. On March 12, 1759, Hume wrote to Dr. Robertson, whose History of Scotland had just been published:-'A plague take you! Here I sat near the historical summit of Parnassus, immediately under Dr. Smollett; and you have the impudence to squeeze yourself by me, and place yourself directly under his feet.' Burton's Hume, ii. 53. This was not Hume's real opinion. He knew his superiority as an historian to Smollett, who in fourteen months had written the history of eighteen centuries. Writing to Millar on April 6, 1758, Hume said: -'I am afraid that the extraordinary run upon Dr. Smollett has a little hurt your sales. But these things are only temporary.' M.S.R.S.E.

Note 10.

Hume wrote to Adam Smith on April 10, 1773 :-' Have

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SIR JOHN DALRYMPLE.

259

you seen Macpherson's Homer? It is hard to tell whether the attempt or the execution be worse. I hear he is employed by the booksellers to continue my History. But, in my opinion, of all men of parts he has the most anti-historical head in the universe.' Burton's Hume, ii. 467. See ante, p. 36, n. 1, and post, Letter of Nov. 13, 1775.

Note II. Sir John Dalrymple of Cranston was more than a knight; he was a baronet. See ante, p. 180, n. 22, for Johnson's criticism of his Memoirs. He ridiculed his style also when he and Boswell were on their way to his house, where they had been invited to dine and spend the night. They had loitered so much that they could not, they saw, arrive in time for dinner. 'When I talked,' writes Boswell, of the grievous disappointment it must have been to him that we did not come to the feast that he had prepared for us, (for he told us he had killed a seven-year old sheep on purpose,) my friend got into a merry mood, and jocularly said, "I dare say, Sir, he has been very sadly distressed: Nay, we do not know but the consequence may have been fatal. Let me try to describe his situation in his own historical style: . . .-"Dinner being ready, he wondered that his guests were not yet come. His wonder was soon succeeded by impatience. He walked about the room in anxious agitation; sometimes he looked at his watch, sometimes he looked out at the window with an eager gaze of expectation, and revolved in his mind the various accidents of human life. His family beheld him with mute concern. 'Surely (said he with a sigh) they will not fail me.' The mind of man can bear a certain pressure; but there is a point when it can bear no more. A rope was in his view; and he died a Roman death." Ib. v. 403. There is a hit at him in the Parl. Hist. xvii. 963, in the report of the proceedings in the Lords on the question of literary property on Feb. 7, 1774. He was heard as counsel for the defendants, 'and spoke for two hours and a half, and seemed to exhaust in this one speech all the knowledge, metaphysical, legal, chemical, and political he possesses.'

Note 12. Dr. John Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, whom Goldsmith in Retaliation describes as 'The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks.' See Boswell's Johnson, i. 228, 407. In Samuel Rogers's Table Talk, p. 106, it is recorded that 'Hume told Cadell, the bookseller, that he had a great desire to be introduced to as many of the persons who had written against him as could be collected. Accordingly, Dr. Douglas, Dr. Adams, etc., were invited by Cadell to dine at his house, in order to meet Hume. They came; and Dr. Price, who was of the party, assured me that they were all delighted with David.' Dr. Douglas had edited the Correspondence of the second Earl of Clarendon and of his brother the Earl of Rochester, etc. Hume wrote to Millar on Oct. 27, 1760:-'I am very much pleased with what you tell me, that the Clarendon Papers have fallen into Dr. Douglas's hands, especially as Dr. Robertson tells me he intends to publish them.' Burton's Hume, ii. 87.

Note 13. See ante, p. 239, n. 9. Hume suggests none but Scotchmen. Even Goldsmith is not mentioned, though he was not an Englishman and a factious barbarian,' and though his 'History,' if we may trust Johnson, 'is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of Dalrymple.' Boswell's Johnson, ii. 236. Note 14. See ante, p. 63, for a letter in which Horace Walpole, writing of the Scotch, says :Do not let us be run down and brazened out of all our virtue, genius, sense, and taste by Laplanders and Boeotians, who never produced one original writer in verse or prose.' Letters, vii. 511. At the time when Hume wrote of England that 'you may as well think of Lapland for an author,' there certainly was a dearth of eminent writers who were Englishmen by birth. In the previous ten years had died Churchill, Young, Sterne, Chatterton and Gray. Johnson, Warburton, Blackstone, Horace Walpole, and Lord Chesterfield were living, but the fame of the last two chiefly rests on their Letters which were not as yet published. Cowper, Crabbe, Gibbon, Jeremy Bentham, and Miss Burney had begun to publish before another ten years had run out. Wordsworth and Coleridge, though born, were still too young even 'to lisp in numbers.' Burke, Goldsmith, and R. B. Sheridan, who brought out his first play two years later, must be excluded as they were Irish by origin. Scotland boasted of Hume, Boswell, Adam Smith, Robertson, Beattie, Blair, Henry, Henry Mackenzie, Reid, the Dalrymples, Ferguson, Kames and Monboddo; but many of these, instead of lasting as 'northern lights,' have turned out to be 'mere farthing candles' (Boswell's Johnson, v. 57). Smollett had been dead rather more than a year, Burns was a boy of fourteen, and Scott an infant.

Note 15. Johnson said of Sterne's great work :-'Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.' Boswell's Johnson, ii. 449. Horace Walpole spoke of it as 'a very insipid and tedious performance'; 'the dregs of nonsense, which have universally met the contempt they deserve.' Letters, iii. 298, 382. Goldsmith in the Citizen of the World (Letter 74) called the author 'a bawdy blockhead.' Speaking of him to Johnson, he said he was 'a very dull fellow'; to which Johnson replied, 'Why, no, Sir.' Boswell's Johnson, ii. 222. Voltaire looked on Sterne as 'le second Rabelais d'Angleterre'; Swift being the first. Euvres de Voltaire, ed. 1819-25, xxxiv. 513.

Note 16. The exception of Franklin has a somewhat comical effect when we call to mind that in 'these thirty years' had been published Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, Tom Jones and Amelia, the great Dictionary, the Rambler and Rasselas, Collins's Odes, and all Gray's Poems. It is highly probable however that Hume, who was a thorough Frenchman in his love of paying pretty compliments, thought that this passage would be shown to Franklin. Strahan had added as a postscript to his last letter, which Hume had just received :-' Dr. Franklin, who sits at my elbow, desires to be affec

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THE DECLINE OF LITERATURE.

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tionately remembered to you and to your worthy sister, who was so kind to him.' M. S. R. S. E.

Hume, writing to Adam Smith on April 1, 1776, about the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, said:-'I should never have expected such an excellent work from the pen of an Englishman. It is lamentable to consider how much that nation has declined in literature during our time.' Burton's Hume, ii. 487. Voltaire, the year following, in a short criticism on the French translation of Tristram Shandy, said :—‘Il eût été à désirer que le prédicateur n'eût fait son comique roman que pour apprendre aux Anglais à ne plus se laisser duper par la charlatanerie des romanciers, et qu'il eût pu corriger la nation qui tombe depuis long-temps, abandonne l'étude des Locke et des Newton pour les ouvrages les plus extravagans et les plus frivoles.' Euvres de Voltaire, xlii. 430.

Note 17. Andrew Stuart's Letters to Lord Mansfield. See ante, p. 239, n. 9. Hume on Feb. 24 of this year, advising Adam Smith to buy this work, says :-'They have, they say, met with vast success in London. Andrew has eased his own mind, and no bad effects are to follow. Lord Mansfield is determined absolutely to neglect them.' Burton's Hume, ii. 466. Dr. Johnson maintained that this publication would not give any uneasiness to the Judge. "For (said he) either he acted honestly, or he meant to do injustice. If he acted honestly, his own consciousness will protect him; if he meant to do injustice, he will be glad to see the man who attacks him so much vexed!" Boswell's Johnson, ii. 475.

Note 18. See ante, p. 141, n. 7.

Note 19. Hume is so full of his own affairs that he forgets to congratulate Strahan on the following piece of family news in a letter dated Jan. 25:-'My son George is now Vicar of Islington, with an income of between £300 and £400 a year; a populous and increasing parish, within half an hour's walk of my own house. The purchase however cost a good deal of money, though less than these things usually come to.' M. S. R. S. E. It was to George Strahan's vicarage that 'Johnson went sometimes for the benefit of good air.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 271.

LETTER LXVII.

Proposed Continuation of the History.

DEAR SIR

EDINBURGH, 22 of Feby., 1773

On reviewing your last Letter and recollecting my Answer to it, I am afraid some mistake might arise between us. No doubt, any body, either from their own

Inclination or from your Application, may undertake to write any part of English History they please; and I can have no Objection to it: But that this Work should be publishd as a Continuation of mine, I see liable to considerable Objections; and it is necessary for me to deliberate well upon it. If it be either much better or much worse than mine, it might be improper, for my own credit, to consent to it; and as long as both the Performance and the Author are unknown to me, I cannot without farther deliberation go so far. I beg, therefore, that this Matter may be fully understood between us, and that nothing I have said may be interpreted as my Approbation of a Scheme, which is totally unknown to me.

I desire much to ask you a Question, which, if the Matter depended solely on you, I know you coud answer me in a moment. But as it is, you can easily, by consulting your Partners, be able to give me Satisfaction in it. In short, I wish to know precisely, whether you intend to publish the new Edition this Season or the Season after, or any subsequent Season. It is needless to say any thing about the Index which coud have been ready long ago. I beg it of you, I even conjure you, to give me at last some Answer which I can depend on. I promise you, that this is the last time I shall write to you on the Subject. I am Dear Sir

Your most humble and most obedient Servant

DAVID HUME.

LETTER LXVIII.

All Faith lost in Cadell and Strahan.

DEAR SIR

EDINBURGH, 15 of March, 1773.

The Number of Copies of my History, which I desir'd to have, was twelve. I agreed with Mr. Millar