CONTENTS. AN AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAVID HUME, Esq. DAVID HUME, the fecond fon of Joseph Hume, Efq. was born at Edinburgh on the 26th of April, O. S. 1711. His ancestors, for feveral generations, had been proprietors of a small eftate called Ninewells, lying on the river Whitwater, about five miles to the east of Dunse, in the county of Berwick; and this estate is still enjoyed by their pofterity. At a fhort distance from Ninewells, ftands the manfion-house of Kames, which belonged to the late Henry Home, who, under the title of Lord Kames, officially affumed by him as a lord of feffion, or judge of the fupreme court of justice in Scotland, is fo well known in the republic of letters, as a philofopher, a lawyer, and a man of tafte. His lordship was the contemporary and intimate friend of our hiftorian. The family name of Hume's mother was Falconer. She was the daughter of Sir David Falconer, who was appointed a lord of feffion, by the title of Lord Newton, on the 11th of June 1676, and fix years afterwards raised to the chair of prefident of that court. Sir David died in 1685, and was fucceeded in his office by Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath. The title of Lord Halkerston devolved by fucceffion on his eldest son; and it may also be mentioned, that Mr. Hume's father claimed his defcent from the noble family of Home: a circumftance which derives its importance folely from the family pride, or, more properly fpeaking, from the vanity of our author, who, during the whole course of his life, valued himself not a little on this double connection with nobility. It is a common practice with biographers to push their researches, with much avidity and perfeverance, into the earlier periods of the lives of those whose transactions they relate. This industry may, perhaps, be occafionally rewarded by the discovery of fome fortuitous incident worthy of *The family of Ninewells feem, from our author's last will and testament, to have spelt the name Home inftead of Hume : but as David was remarkably pertinacious in writing his name Hume, his relations have fince followed his example. being commemorated; but it is beneath the dignity of maturer age to record the frivolities of childhood. The juvenile years of Hume were not marked by any thing which can attract our notice. His father died while our hiftorian was an infant, and left the care of him, his elder brother Jofeph, and fifter Catharine, to their mother, who, although ftill in the bloom of life, devoted herself to the education of her children with a laudable affiduity. Under this maternal fuperintendence, aided by the instruction which a country school could afford, Hume spent his first years. If he had, on attaining manhood, cultivated poetry with fuccefs, inftead of attaching himself to the feverer ftudies of the philofophical historian, a credulous biographer, yielding to the furmifes of fancy, would have traced a final caufe to the fequeftered scene of our author's youthful days; for the pleafures of Arcadia were not unknown to the country furrounding Ninewells, notwithstanding the fterility to which it had been condemned according to the fate of thofe tracts of land which border hoftile ftates. The valley and the mountain's fide ftill refounded with the notes of the fhepherd's pipe every streamlet was immortalized in our national fongs; and every height and every heath had been the scene of battle between the armies of the two rival kingdoms, or of the more fanguinary exploits of the lawless marauders. |