MY OWN LI F. E I T is difficult for a man to fpeak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I fhall be short. It may be thought an instance of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this Narrative fhall contain little more than the History of my Writings; as, indeed, almost all my life has been spent in literary purfuits and occupations. The first fuccefs of moft of my writings was not such as to be an object of vanity. I was born the 26th of April 1711, old ftyle, 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's; and my ancestors had been proprietors of the estate, which my brother poffeffes, for several generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David 3 David Falconer, Prefident of the 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 flender. My father, who paffed for a man of parts, died when I was an infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a fifter, under the. care of our mother, a woman of fingular merit, who, though young and handfome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children. I paffed through the ordinary courfe of education with fuccefs, and was feized very early with a paffion for literature, which has been the ruling paffion of my fource of my life, and the great enjoyments. My ftudious difpofition, my fobriety, and, my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profeffion for me; but I found an unfurmountable averfion to every thing but the pursuits of philofophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the au thors which I was fecretly devouring. My very flender fortune, however, being unfuitable 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 fome recommendations to eminent merchants, but in a few months found that fcene totally unfuit B 3 |