86. July 27, 1776. Arrival at Edinburgh; increase of the ill- ness; a dying man's corrections 87. July 30, 1776. A further correction; the physicians report a cure; Dr. Robertson and Strahan agreed 88. Aug. 12, 1776. The last correction; life a burthen 89. Sept. 2, 1776. [John Home of Ninewells to William Strahan ;] 90. Sept. 5, 1776. [Adam Smith to William Strahan ;] The codi- 92. Dec. 2, 1776. [Adam Smith to William Strahan;] Hume's 93. [Dec. 1776.] [Draft of a letter from Adam Smith to William Strahan;] The probable effect of the publication of the 94. Jan. 30, 1777. [David Hume the nephew to William Strahan ;] 95. Feb. 17, 1777. [John Home to William Strahan ;] Copies of the History asked for; the publication of the Dialogues; Hume's sentiments when dying with regard to futurity. 358 96. Feb. 25, 1777. [John Home to William Strahan ;] The sepa- rate publication of Hume's Life . 97. March 13, 1777. [John Home to William Strahan;] David 98. Nov. 1, 1776. [James Hutton to William Strahan ;] Proposal to show some of Hume's letters to the King and Queen. 367 99. Nov. 6, 1776. [James Hutton to William Strahan;] List of 30 THE LIFE OF DAVID HUME, Esq. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. MY OWN LIFE. Ir is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity, therefore I shall be short. It may be thought an instance of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this narrative shall contain little more than the history of my writings, as indeed almost all my life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations. The first success of most of my writings was not such as to be an object of vanity. I was born the twenty-sixth of April, 1711, old style, at Edinburgh. I was of a good family, both by father and mother. My father's family is a branch of the earl of Home's or Hume's1; and my ancestors had been proprietors of the estate which my brother possesses for several generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, President of the College of Justice: the title of Lord Halkerton came by succession to her brother. My family, however, was not rich; and, being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an infant, leaving me with 1 Hume showed his family pride by selecting the Earl of Home as one of the two witnesses to his will. For the spelling of the name see post, p. 9, n. 10. 2 The estate, which lay very near Berwick, bore the name of Ninewells. 'It is so named from a cluster of springs of that number. They burst forth from a gentle declivity in front of the mansion, which has on each side a semicircular rising bank, covered with fine timber, and fall, after a short time, into the bed of the river Whitewater, which forms a boundary in the front.' Burton's Life of Hume, i. 8. b 2 an elder brother and sister, under the care of our mother, a woman of singular merit: who, though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children'. I passed through the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments. My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an unsurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning; and, while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring". 3 1 Dr. Alexander Carlyle records the following anecdote, which he had from one of Hume's most intimate friends, the Honourable Patrick Boyle.' 'When David and he were both in London, at the period when David's mother died, Mr. Boyle found him in the deepest affliction, and in a flood of tears. He said to him, "My friend, you owe this uncommon grief to your having thrown off the principles of religion; for if you had not, you would have been consoled by the firm belief that the good lady, who was not only the best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, was now completely happy in the realms of the just." To which David replied, "Though I threw out my speculations to entertain and employ the learned and metaphysical world, yet in other things I do not think so differently from the rest of mankind as you may imagine.' Dr. A. Carlyle's Autobiography, p. 273. With this anecdote we may contrast the following: Lord Charlemont 'hinted' to Hume, shortly after his return to England in 1766, ‘that he was convinced he must be perfectly happy in his new friend Rousseau, as their sentiments were, he believed, nearly similar. 'Why no, man," said he; "in that you are mistaken; Rousseau is not what you think him; he has a hankering after the Bible, and indeed is little better than a Christian in a way of his own." Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont, ed. 1812, i. 230. 2 The ruling passion' comes from Pope's Moral Essays, i. 174:— Search then the ruling passion there alone The wild are constant, and the cunning known.' Johnson speaks of this as Pope's 'favourite theory,' and adds :-'Of any passion, thus innate and irresistible, the existence may reasonably be doubted.' Johnson's Works, ed. 1825, viii. 293. 3 Paul Voet, born 1619, died 1677, a Dutch jurisconsult, published among other works Commentarius in Institutiones imperiales. His son John, born 1647, died 1714, published Commentarius ad Pandectas. Nouv. Biog. Gén. xlvi. 335. Arnold Vinnen, born 1588, died 1657. Francis Horner, in the plan which he laid down for the study of the Scotch law in 1797, says :-'I must study both Heineccius and Vinnius.' Life of Horner, ed. 1843, i. 52. 5 Hume, in a statement of his health which he drew up for a physician in the year 1734, says :-'Every one who is acquainted either with the philosophers or critics knows that there is nothing yet established in either of these two sciences, My very slender fortune, however, being unsuitable to this plan of life, and my health being a little broken by my ardent application, I was tempted, or rather forced, to make a very feeble trial for entering into a more active scene of life'. In 1734, I went to Bristol, with recommendations to eminent merchants; but in a few months found that scene totally unsuitable to me. I went over to France with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat; and I there laid that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, 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. The law, which was the business I designed to follow, appeared nauseous to me, and I could think of no other way of pushing my fortune in the world, but that of a scholar and philosopher.' Burton's Hume, i. 31. 'In this same statement, after describing a weakness of spirits into which he had fallen, which hindered him from 'following out any train of thought by one continued stretch of view,' he continues:- I found that as there are two things very bad for this distemper, study and idleness, so there are two things very good, business and diversion; and that my whole time was spent betwixt the bad, with little or no share of the good. For this reason I resolved to seek out a more active life, and though I could not quit my pretensions in learning but with my last breath, to lay them aside for some time in order the more effectually to resume them.' Ib. p. 37. It is a curious coincidence that Hume and Johnson were first attacked by melancholy at the same time. 'About the beginning of September, 1729,' says Hume, all my ardour seemed to be in a moment extinguished.' Ib. p. 31. 'While Johnson was at Lichfield,' writes Boswell, 'in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria.' Boswell's Life of Johnson, Clarendon Press edition, i. 63. We may compare with both these cases the melancholy into which John Stuart Mill sank at about the same age, in the autumn of 1826. Mill's Autobiography, ed. 1873, p. 133. 2 In the Memoirs of Hannah More, i. 16, it is stated that she was much indebted for her critical knowledge to a linen-draper of Bristol, of the name of Peach. He had been the friend of Hume, who had shown his confidence in his judgment by entrusting to him the correction of his History, in which he used to say he had discovered more than two hundred Scotticisms.' He told her that 'Hume was dismissed from the merchant's counting-house on account of the promptitude of his pen in correction of the letters entrusted to him to copy.' The narrative is not free from error, as it is stated in it that Hume resided two years in Bristol. to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature. During my retreat in France, first at Rheims, but chiefly at La Fleche, in Anjou, I composed my Treatise of Human Nature. After passing three years very agreeably in that country, I came over to London in 1737. In the end of 1738, I published my treatise, and immediately went down to my mother and my brother, who lived at his country-house, and was employing himself very judiciously and successfully in the improvement of his fortune. Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots. But being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the blow, and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country. In 1742, I printed at Edinburgh the first part of my Essays, the work was favourably received, and soon made me entirely forget my former disappointment. I continued with my mother and brother in the 1 The publisher, John Noone, gave Hume £50, and twelve bound copies of the book for right to publish an edition of the first two volumes, of one thousand copies. Dr. Burton, after praising Noone's 'discernment and liberality,' continues: It may be questioned whether in this age, when knowledge has spread so much wider, and money is so much less valuable, it would be easy to find a bookseller, who, on the ground of its internal merits, would give £50 for an edition of a new metaphysical work, by an unknown and young author.' Burton's Hume, i. 66. The book had become so scarce by the time of Hume's death, that the reviewer of his Life in the Annual Register for 1776, ii. 28, thinks it needful, he says, to give some account of it. 2 'All, all but truth, drops dead-born from the press, Like the last Gazette, or the last Address.' Pope, Epil. Sat. ii. 226. Hume not only published these Essays anonymously, but feigned that they were the work of a new author. Burton's Hume, i. 136. On June 13, 1742, he wrote to Henry Home (afterwards Lord Kames) :-'The Essays are all sold in London, as I am informed by two letters from English gentlemen of my acquaintance. There is a demand for them; and, as one of them tells me, Innys, the great bookseller in Paul's Churchyard, wonders there is not a new edition, for that he cannot find copies for his customers. I am also told that Dr. Butler [the author of the Analogy] has everywhere recommended them.' Ib. p. 143. The first volume was published in 1741. They are mentioned in the list of books for March, 1742, in the Gent. Mag., but are not reviewed. The Treatise of Human Nature was not even mentioned. |