In religion, Hume was a skeptic; in philosophy a materialist. He was a subtle thinker and reasoner, and was bold and original in his ideas. In private life he thus describes himself in his posthumous book, "My Own Life":

A man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social and cheerful humor, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions.

Hume's friends bear out this favorable self-portraiture, and add that he was a charming companion, full of gayety and of a delicate humor which never transgressed the bounds of good taste. He spent most of his life in Edinburgh.

William Robertson (1721-93) was also a Scotchman but of a very different type of mind. He was the son of a clergyman and himself took orders; and his writings are pervaded by a religious spirit. His "History of Scotland" brings down events in that country to the beginning of the reign of James I. in England (1603), and is a carefully written work, though without the marks of genius which makes Hume's "England" so attractive. Robertson's

greatest work is "The History of the Emperor Charles V.," which involves almost every country in Europe, and gives opportunity for much picturesque detail. It is written with conscientious care, and is as accurate as the means at the writer's disposal would allow. The history has since been edited by Prescott, and much new material added which was inaccessible to Robertson. The fault of the latter was that he glorified his subject too much. The emperor seemed to be, so to speak, always on his throne, wearing his crown and sceptre; whereas the real man had at least his share of human weakness, and was by no means an ideal hero. Robertson's last work of importance was a "History of America," written with the same painstaking earnestness which distinguishes his other books.

Edward Gibbon (1737-94), the last and greatest of the three writers we have been considering, was born near London, and studied at Oxford. Of his attainments, he tells us that he possessed "a stock of erudition that would have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school-boy would have been ashamed." This means that on account of ill-health he had studied irregularly, while his reading had been omniverous and enormous. Becoming a Roman Catholic, he was obliged to leave college, and was sent by his father to a protestant clergyman at Lausanne, Switzerland, with whom he remained five years, becoming a proficient in French and gaining a good knowledge of Latin. While there he returned nominally to the Protestant Church, though there is reason to believe that he had become and ever afterward remained an infidel at heart. In the course of a continental tour he found himself at Rome, and there, musing among the ruins of the capitol, as he tells us in his highly interesting and piquant "Memoirs" (his autobiography), he first conceived the thought of writing a history of the "Decline and Fall" of that stupendous power whose relics he saw scattered around him. He was then twenty-seven years old. Eight years were to pass by before the great history was begun, and twenty-three before the last words should be written. In the meantime, Gibbon travelled much and lived in various places. At one time he would be a member of parliament in his own country; at another, shut up in his library at Lausanne, where, in his fifty-first year, the book- a monument of industry was at last completed. The amount of research required had been prodigious. He used no translations, but went directly to the originals of the books from which he drew his materials, and never rested until he had verified every statement. It has been said that the "Decline and Fall" is "the largest historic painting ever executed by a single hand." The conception

is grand, the mode of treatment masterly. In particular, the historian excels in perspective-the art of giving to the different parts of his story their due proportion and importance. Nothing was too large and nothing too small to engage his attention, but he knew the relative value of each branch of his subject, and whether he was raising an arch of philosophic theory or laying a tesselated floor of florid description, his workmanship remains unrivalled. His style is open to criticism. Massive and magnificent as it is, it is sometimes almost oppressive from its wonderfully balanced evenness of structure, with the same cadence, the same rhythmic rise and fall, so frequently recurring. It is a style to admire, but not to imitate.

The most serious objection to the original work is its attitude toward Christianity. Candid on all other subjects, toward this he betrays a bitterness of feeling entirely at variance with the dispassionate utterances of the unprejudiced historian. Fortunately for young people, who in these busy days might not have time to read the whole of the voluminous record, an excellent abridgement exists in the "Student's Gibbon," in which all objectionable expressions are omitted, and the great mass of information is compressed into a space which makes it not impossible to attack.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.

HE latter half of the eighteenth century was, with one magnificent exception, as poor in dramatic works as its early part had been brilliant. After the death of Congreve in 1729, the short list of David Garrick (1716-79), Samuel Foote (1720-77), Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), George Colman (1733-94), George

Colman the younger (1762-1836), this (omitting the name of Goldsmith, which has been already mentioned) brings us to the great master of modern comedy, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)).

Sheridan came of a noted Irish family, of which he was the third in direct descent who showed remarkable talents. His grandfather, Thomas Sheridan, an author and a wit, was the friend of Swift; his father, also named Thomas, was an actor as well as an author, and stood next to Garrick in his profession. His mother wrote both plays and novels; and so the boy had a literary inheritance to start with. He left school with the reputation of being a dunce; but this must have been only from laziness, for he showed in after life that he could learn what he chose to learn. He acquired information mainly by reading, for he was through life a pleasure - lover, and liked no form of hard work. He made a secret marriage with the beautiful Miss Linley, a popular public singer, and daughter of Thomas Linley, the famous musical composer. The marriage proved a very happy one. Sheridan, although extremely poor at the time, and possessing scarcely anything but a small marriage-portion brought by his wife, would never allow her to sing in public or for money. Her fine voice was to be heard only at home or in friends' houses. Depending on success yet to come, Sheridan took a house in a fashionable quarter, and drew around him a brilliant circle, attracted by his wit and good - fellowship and his wife's many charms. His first comedy, "The Rivals," was produced in 1775, and, strange to say, was considered a failure. This was owing partly to its great length, and partly to the poor acting of one of the principal characters. On the second night a good actor replaced the inferior one, and although little enthusiasm was shown, the play gradually grew in favor and the author had the satisfaction of seeing it established as one

of the standard comedies of the English language. Bob Acres, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Mrs. Malaprop, and Lydia Languish are types which the stage could not afford to be without.

Sheridan's next venture of importance was "The Duenna," an opera, for which his father-in-law, Mr. Linley, furnished the music. It was immensely popular, having a longer run than had even Gay's "Beggar's Opera." "The School for Scandal" followed, and afterward "The Critic," one of the most amusing burlesques ever written. The four pieces, with some minor ones, were produced within the space of four years. From this time he abandoned dramatic writing, except for one tragedy, "Pizarro," and betook himself to parliamentary life.

Here he proved himself greater.as an orator than he had been as a dramatist. His splendid rhetoric and impassioned eloquence carried, while he was speaking, everything before him. For thirty-two years he sat in the house, filling meantime with credit several government positions. During all this time he had been living extravagantly, and though as an M.P. he could not be arrested for debt, when this protection was withdrawn he was constantly harassed by creditors and his house repeatedly occupied by bailiffs. He had, also, some unavoidable misfortunes, for Drury Lane Theatre, in which he had bought out Garrick's interest, was twice burned down during his proprietorship. Still, after making every allowance for him, we must regret that his magnificent talents were not accompanied with a sense of pecuniary honor, and that present enjoyment always seemed better to him than permanent good. When troubles began to press upon him he fell into intemperate habits which brought on disease, and his last days were as wretched as his earlier had been brilliant. He was arrested for debt while dying, and his creditors were only pacified by the kind